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I read an article from eMarketer regarding smartphone usage.  They seemed to be drawing conclusions about their data that were subsubstantiated by their raw data.  From my science days, it was beaten into me that two numbers are not different unless they are statistically significant from each other and there are varying degree of statistical significance.  Here is a quick cut and paste from Wikipedia:

In statistics, a result is called statistically significant if it is unlikely to have occurred by chance. The phrase test of significance was coined by Ronald Fisher.

The use of the word significance in statistics is different from the standard one, which suggests that something is important or meaningful. For example, a study that included tens of thousands of participants might be able to say with very great confidence that people of one race are more intelligent than people of another race by 1/20th of an IQ point. This result would be statistically significant, but the difference is small enough to be utterly unimportant. Many researchers urge that tests of significance should always be accompanied by effect size statistics, which approximate the size and thus the practical importance of the difference.

The amount of evidence required to accept that an event is unlikely to have arisen by chance is known as the significance level or critical p-value: in traditional Fisherian statistical hypothesis testing, the p-value is the probability conditional on the null hypothesis of the observed data or more extreme data. If the obtained p-value is small then it can be said either the null hypothesis is false or an unusual event has occurred. It is worth stressing that p-values do not have any repeat sampling interpretation.

An alternative statistical hypothesis testing framework is the Neyman-Pearson frequentist school which requires that both a null and an alternative hypothesis to be defined and investigates the repeat sampling properties of the procedure i.e. the probability that a decision to reject the null hypothesis will be made when it is in fact true and should not have been rejected: a “false positive” or Type I error and the probability that a decision will be made to accept the null hypothesis when it is false Type II error.

More typically, the significance level of a test is such that the probability of mistakenly rejecting the null hypothesis is no more than the stated probability. This allows the test to be performed using non-significant statistics which has the advantage of reducing the computational burden while wasting some information.

It is worth stressing that Fisherian p-values are not Neyman-Pearson Type I errors. This confusion is unfortunately propagated by many statistics textbooks.

So when I saw the data, I asked about this.

And interestingly, they actually used my tweet in one of their articles.  Cool!

I can’t even explain how spot on this is. The premise is that stop signs have not been invented yet. and that they are “being designed” by a group of marketing people from a major corporation.  Imagine me as that designer.  You can see why I am not a very good account guy.

Brillant.

Absolutely brilliant.

Chrysler Building to be sold to Abu Dhabi (NY Post)

It’s oil-rich foreign governments who are using the money that we give them to buy our country out from under us. Essentially, the balance of power is shifting because these “third world” countries now hold the most valuable resources.

What are we going to sell next to feed our insatiable appetite for convenience? The Statue of Liberty? Yankee Stadium?

We need to put our frickin’ noses to the grindstone and get the fuck off of foreign oil. Actually, any oil. If we can get to the moon using Tandy computers from the 1960s, we can figure out how to harness the power of the frickin’ sun and desalinate water.

It’s about time we started getting our asses in gear. I’m encouraged by the direction that we seem to be leaning…but for Christ’s sake, I hope that we figure it out before the whole thing goes to shit.

P.S. The Italians just bought the Flatiron Building.  The end of American dominance is ending.  We’d better learn how to play well in the sandbox with the other kids.

Originally published August 18, 2003

Andrew Zolli writes an interesting article about the infiltration of corporate brands into our culture. He writes:

For starters, brands aren’t invading the culture, for many they are the culture. The marketplace has trumped other ‘meaning making’ institutions in people’s lives, from political parties to religious institutions. Ask an average citizen to name their elected representatives and you’ll get a disinterested stare, but everybody has a passionately held opinion about Walmart.

I have to chime in here with my $0.02.

Now, most people are going to read these words and think that I am some tight-assed corporate fool. I’m not. I’m just a guy who is completely tired of the complete lack of context in our world today.

What I mean is that the logos that we see aren’t the problem. As most understand, a brand isn’t a logo. It’s the sum total of all the experiences that you get from any entity. This can be a person, or a place, or a company. Most companies engineer these experiences so that they are in line with their competitive positioning. Makes sense. Now, the argument against corporatization is that people are identifying themselves based on the suite of brands that they like.

For instance, people can be classified as “Coke people” or “Pepsi people”. And that pissed alot of people off. But in reality, its not about Coke or Pepsi. It’s about which positioning you see yourself more aligned with. For instance, are you traditional or are you cutting-edge?

I see absolutely nothing wrong with using brands as a shared language of expression. People have aligned themselves for what seems like forever with these sorts of things. In fact, the author says that political parties and religious affiliations are more important than corporate brands.

What?

They’re all the same thing. The Republican party is a brand. The Catholic Church is a brand. C’mon now. When I say “Republican” what do you think about? When I say “Catholic”, tell me that you don’t have a preconceived notion.

You can’t.

People associate themselves with whatever entities that they either feel close to or aspire to be like. It’s that simple. And if corporate brands are one instrument of this expression…then so be it. What’s wrong with secular associations or apolitical ones? I’m a big fan.

I don’t understand why these people think that one symbolic expression of self is better than another. So it’s corporate? So what? In fact, to be honest, I find government and religion more reprehensible than corporations.

Why? Because at least corporations will tell you…”We’re in it to make money.” They have to…they’re legally obligated to look out for their shareholders. They aren’t shady because you know the motivations up front.

That’s more than I can say for Andrew Zolli’s “meaningful-making institutions”.