August 2008
8 posts
How the undecideds decide - Cosmic Log - msnbc.com →
This study purports to have found a method to predict how “undecided” voters will really vote by examining their reactions to images and how quickly the test subjects associated these images with negative or positive words.
There is a kind of implicit cynicism in this sort of thing—as if the assumption by these researchers is that when you say you are undecided, we know you...
Pollster.com: The "Loopy" Zogby Polls →
A New "Hospital Compare" Tool From the Dep. of... →
Boy, are tools like this potentially misleading. This one lets you see the mortality rates for a variety of conditions from your local hospitals. Here’s the obvious, ridiculous danger of such stats. I’m sure the tiny little hospital that I used in northern Maine growing up has great rates—because if I were really sick, I’d drive to Bangor, or Portland. Similarly, If you had...
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– TED | TEDBlog: An unlikely master of card magic: Lennart Green on TED.com
A personal hero of mine.
The Oprah/Obama Connection →
This study is fascinating: a pair of University of Maryland researchers claim to have quantified the “Oprah effect” on Obama by positing a correlation between sales of her magazine (“O”) and books recommended by her book club with county-level vote data. Their results (which are available in full here) claim that Oprah’s endorsement and subsequent campaigning for...
GMail, and Receptivity
So, Google does a lot of smart things, and they make a lot of money doing them. I know I have clicked on my share of text ads and sponsored links in my day—all while I was actually searching for a product or service. In other words, when I am receptive to a message, and I am looking for that message, I am likely to respond to that message. And I do.
But I wonder how much GMail is adding to...