Andrew Hargadon

Faster, Better, Cheaper... choose better

Hard to believe that a few years ago, we were marveling at the power that web2.0 was giving us to publish our own content.  Now we're overwhelmed--at least I am--by not by the task of making sense of so much new content, but also the task of generating original content with any meaning or value to distinguish it from everything else.  Our posts, to paraphrase Roy Batty, are "like tears in rain."

Merlin Mann, of 43 Folders, captures this sentiment wonderfully with his post/essay Better:

What worries me are the consequences of a diet comprised mostly of fake-connectedness, makebelieve insight, and unedited first drafts of everything. I think it’s making us small. I know that whenever I become aware of it, I realize how small it can make me. So, I’ve come to despise it.

With this diet metaphor in mind, I want to, if you like, start eating better. But, I also want to start growing a tastier tomato — regardless of how easy it is to pick, package, ship, or vend. The tomato is the story, my friend.

This doesn’t mean I’ll be liveblogging a lot of ham-fisted attempts to turn “everything” off. But it does mean making mindful decisions about the quality of any input that I check repeatedly — as well as any “stuff” I produce. Everything. From news sources to entertainment programming, and from ephemeral web content down to each email message I decide to respond to. The shit has to go, inclusive.

Personally, I have no idea how to cope with the downpour of information and insights and I suspect few others do either.  Which is why I really appreciated Mann's recognition that, while there is no standard response, we each in our own way need to learn how to "start eating better" and, equally, fighting the urge for putting out faster and cheaper insights when the nutritional value all comes from the better.

Great video on collabeeration

a great video on rapid prototyping and collaboration from Paul Hudnut, BOPreneur extraordinaire, as well as board member at New Belgium Brewing Co...one of the coolest jobs.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics

Mark Twain said it best.  Statistics has become the weapon of choice these days in everything from science to stimulus (plans, that is).  Maybe because it is one of the most versatile of weapons.  You choose the data, you choose the methods of analysis, and you make claims about how doing things one way is "significantly" different than doing things another way. 

Significance here being the cutting edge of the weapon, by way of its double meaning. For statisticians, a (statistically) significant difference can be (relatively) insignificant because no matter how small the difference, the (statistical) significance is an internal measure related to differences within the data and unrelated to its importance on the outside.  Except, of course, that it allows one to claim they have found a significant difference.     

Two unrelated articles came my way this morning. The first is a recent study by MIT neuroscientist Edward Vul, who:

...analyzed 54 prominent studies that used functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to identify the brain areas associated with specific emotions — and found that 28 of them used the statistical methods and filters that were most likely to yield data that would confirm the researchers’ hypotheses. According to Vul, this cherrypicking may have been inadvertent; nevertheless, it produced correlations that “exceed what is statistically possible” and are almost certainly false. (from VSL)

Just when your faith in science was lost, along comes a second article, in the NYT sports section, of all places, that restores it with one of the most interesting and (statistically and personally) significant non-findings I've seen in a long time.

It turns out that the average free-throw percentage in college and professional basketball has remained essentially unchanged for the last 50 years (Free Throws).  While every other sports statistic has fallen, this measure of performance has shown itself resistant to shoes, shoe contracts, performance enhancers, the hem length of shorts, ESPN, tattoos, and television contracts:

Basketball in the United States has changed in myriad ways over the decades, from flat-footed set shots to dunks, from crotch-hugging uniforms to baggy knee-length shorts, from the dominance of American players to the recent infusion of international stars.

But one thing has remained remarkably constant: the rate at which players make free throws.

It's nice to know the more things (significantly) change, the more they stay (significantly) the same.