anotherhacker

Lavish parties send the wrong message to employees. If I were CEO I'd say:

"No more parties. We're going to use the to retrain employees (instead of firing them) and avoid layoffs."

Mayer is turing out to be a terrible CEO.

This article describes the various multi-million dollar parties.

http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-blows...

You're correct in attacking the math the authors use. It's clear they are bending the math to fit the phenomena. However, that doesn't invalidate the hypothesis.

This paper appears heavily influenced by Nassim Nicholas Taleb: systematic failure, bounded vs unbounded variance, (more data) => (more noise) => (more spurious relationships), natural vs artificial systems, and even the reference to the heuristics of ancient cultures.

It looks like the authors were trying to apply math to observed phenomena. They may not have the right math to make it work-so they fudged it a bit.

Nassim talks about similar phenomena here:

http://arxiv.org/a/taleb_n_1.html

Downvoted? I gave a perfect real world example that happens in product development and marketing research.

Mo' Data, Mo' Problems.

The New Coke flop is a perfect example of this.

New Coke was the result of the largest marketing / consumer research project ever. The conclusion of this research was to change Coke's formula. Coca-Cola Chairman Roberto Goizueta claimed that the decision was “one of the easiest we have ever made”. Coca-Cola thought this way for two reasons:

#1 Research was done with a sample of over 200,000 customers.

#2 Coca-Cola’s researchers triangulated the validity of their data with a mixed-method approach. They used focus groups, various surveys, and individual interviews.

All these data & research did the opposite of what they were supposed to. Their large sample size gave them lots of useless data. Data triangulation—which was supposed to safe guard them—did the opposite: it convinced them that their useless data, were useful.

Why does this happen?

In an unnatural system, variance is unbounded. As your data set grows, the unbounded variance grows nonlinearly compared to the valid data. As variance increases, deviations grow larger, and happen more frequently. Spurious relationships grow much faster than authentic ones. The noise becomes the signal.

"Why 3.5 times more Apple users choose Apple Maps over Google Maps"

The power of default settings is huge. Perhaps you're thinking of yourself or your peers.90% of the rest of the population just doesn't care about these issues.

Source: http://fortune.com/2015/06/16/apple-google-maps-ios/

Overcame...and then lost it.

"Firefox's total user share -- an amalgamation of desktop and mobile -- was 9.5%"

Firefox gained marketshare 10 years ago b/c most internet users were still early adopters. There people were more tech savvy and into open source.

Source: http://www.computerworld.com/article/2893514/an-incredibly-s...

I'm doubtful of this taking off. People stick with the default apps and settings. The average person just really doesn't care that much about this kind of thing.

Maybe enterprise or businesses will like it - so they can avoid their employees visit whitelisted sites that mistakenly have malicious code in the ads. Eg. Flash

Saying someone is wrong is not personal. If I say 2+2=5, someone should tell me I'm wrong.

Your comment is also off topic, breaks the guidelines you just referenced, and doesn't belong in this thread (unfortunately neither does this comment- I apologize for that).

I will no longer comment on this thread.

You're wrong.

I can tell you didn't watch the video or read the link either.

Watch the video. Read the link. Get smarter.

Your agreement or disagreement is irrelevant.

Did you watch the video? Did you read the link? Obviously not.

If you had, you would have listened to Heinz Kohut talk about how empathy is misused. Empathy is an informer for action-it has nothing to do with "connecting with people"

I also take it you don't know who Heinz Kohut is. Which means you're not educated in psychology. Anyone with any kind of decent education will study Kohut just as much as Freud or Skinner.

This person doesn't understand what empathy is.

Empathy is a slow process of analyzing someone's emotional state so you can affect it. E.g. The Nazis were excellent empathizers. Rockets and dive bombers (Stuka) had sirens to intimate. The battle of Britain was a psychological one-and it almost worked. Prisoners were told to "remember your locker number" as they were ushered into gas chambers.

Don't confuse empathy with responsiveness, sympathy or compassion. We already have words for those.

Learn more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ6Y3hoKI8U http://www.selfpsychologypsychoanalysis.org/empathy-mis.shtm...

This isn't disruption. It's just "make something that's cheaper and/or better".

It's a 75+ year old idea called called Creative Destruction.

How about calling every day - not just Mothers's Day....

On writing specs: I disagree with this. I believe the author left that out because writing 'good' specs is inconsequential. I used to think I had to write good specs, but then I realized that I was better off spending time with the team to make sure they understood the motivation behind making a change. If an organization told me that I was gonna be writing specs - I wouldn't want to work there. It's a waste of time.

In brief: it's a waste of time because it assumes that one knows all the variables when creating something. If you are truly creating something, then by definition it's not be done before; thus, no one can know all the consequences of implementation. You're better off having an open mind and be quick to experiment and learn.