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I flew out to Arizona last week to watch some spring training baseball. Since I was thinking about baseball and tickets, I wanted to explore the naming of sections within a stadium. In my experience, the naming of sections is not as calculated at it might appear (or should be). In other words, come up with a name for a…
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After reading this post on Gawker about New York City subway delays, I was intrigued by how the information was (or could be) framed. The article mentions that 78.8% of New York City subway trains were on time in 2014. Mathematically, that suggests (as the article mentions as well) subway trains are late 21.2% of the…
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All of my #1QFriday questions thus far have focused on a numerical response. How few miles is it from Eugene, OR to Philadelphia, PA? What percentage of 40-yard field goals does the average college kicker make? All of them required some sort of numerical estimate. This week’s question switched to choice. Specifically, the task was…
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A lot of the consumer behavior effects I have demonstrated thus far in my #1QFriday series have been on the question side of things. For example, “How many miles…” versus “How few miles” is a markedness effect built into the actual question. This week’s survey looks at the answer side of things: What do you…
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Markedness. Kind of a funny word. I barely knew how to pronounce it when I first saw it. But it has a serious influence on numerical perceptions. I have said on multiple occasions that words matter. A lot. This week’s question continues to explore that idea: How many miles do you think it is from Philadelphia,…
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Last week, I asked about differences in perception between a 39-yard, 40-yard and 41-yard field goal. The primary goal was exploring how people perceive various distances and differences between those distances. In other words, we might have some rough understanding of how hard a “40ish-yard field goal” is and thus lump in 39 yard and 41 yard…
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The majority of my research interests involve the relationship between words and numbers. How do words influence our (numerical) assessment of a situation? Last week, I asked what you expected a player’s shooting percentage to be when a player’s shooting was referred to as “good” vs. “not bad”. On that note, I was in New York City…
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Words are extremely powerful. One word can be extremely powerful. We tend to throw out words without always thinking about how they are perceived. It can be interesting though to take a step back and think about what we are really trying to say and how people interpret the words we use. That leads us to last Friday’s…