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This week’s featured posts.
Strategy. Innovation. Brand.
Sunday Shorts – 4
Is that Trazodone I taste?
Interesting things I’ve seen this week (even if they weren’t published this week)
What can pickpockets teach us about how our minds work? It’s simple: you’re not nearly as focused as you think. It’s easy to divert your attention and rob you blind. Click here for The New Yorker article.
What’s a phablet? You can find out by going to the Consumer Electronics Show or by clicking here. (Hint: it’s what happens when you cross a phone with a tablet).
And how about the Netherlands glow-in-the-dark highways? It’s another example of mashup thinking. Just mashup asphalt and phosphorescent powder. It absorbs solar energy during the day and glows at night. Now why didn’t we think of that? Really… why didn’t we? Click here.
What is City 2.0? We’re spending about $100 billion worldwide each year trying to find out. Maybe it’s not just smart gadgets. Click here.
Why wouldn’t you try to poison your husband by putting Trazodone pills in his tuna salad? Because the bitter taste would tip him off right away. One needs to be practical in these endeavors. Click here.
Should you stand or sit at work? Why isn’t lying down an option? Click here.
Would you rather be right or would you rather be president? Phillip Stephens writes that left-wingers used to be the ones who were too pure to make the compromises needed to govern. Now it’s the right wing — on both sides of the Atlantic. Click here.
Christmas – Deadliest Day of the Year
Drop by any time.
Here’s a little exercise in critical thinking. More people in the United States die on Christmas Day than on any other day of the year. It’s our deadliest day. New Year’s Day is the second deadliest day.
The first question a critical thinker would ask is: Is that really true? Here’s the evidence: an article published in Social Science and Medicine in October 2010, that analyzed 54 million death certificates from 1979 through 2004. (Click here for the abstract and charts; the full-text is behind a pay wall). Regardless of the setting or the cause, the number of deaths clearly peaks on Christmas Day. This affects all demographic groups, except children.
The next question a critical thinker might ask is: Why would that be? Here the logic gets a little fuzzy. As the authors of the research paper point out, they tested nine different hypotheses but believe more research is necessary. So let’s think about it a bit.
- Hypothesis 1: Perhaps it’s because people overeat on Christmas Day, overloading the digestive system, causing systemic stress and death. Really? One big meal causes death? If that’s the case, many of us would be long gone already.
- Hypothesis 2: It’s the stress of having all those family members and in-laws around. True, that’s a lot of stress but a lot of other holidays cause stress as well. If that’s the case, why wouldn’t we also see spikes on Thanksgiving or July 4th?
- Hypothesis 3: maybe sick people hang on until Christmas and then let go. It’s possible — people can and do keep themselves alive until a big event. But that doesn’t explain why mortality rises in the days and weeks before Christmas. If people were hanging on, you would expect to see a dip in deaths just before Christmas.
The hypothesis I like — which I spotted in the Daily Beast (click here) — is that Christmas isn’t abnormal in terms of life-threatening incidents, but is abnormal in the way people behave when a life-threatening incident occurs. If you feel chest pains on any random day, you may just head straight for the hospital. That’s a good idea because the sooner you get there, the better your chances of survival. On Christmas, however, people may delay, not wanting to spoil the festive atmosphere or leave the family celebration. They may also believe that they’ll get poor service at the hospital on Christmas. The hospital will likely be understaffed or staffed by second stringers, etc. Better to wait ’til tomorrow to get better service.
The next question a critical thinker might ask is: If this is true, what should we do about it, if anything? This hypothesis, of course, is not fully tested. We can’t claim conclusively that it’s true. But there is a certain logic about it. Perhaps enough that we can make Pascal’s wager — the evidence isn’t conclusive but it’s strong enough to make a bet. If we’re wrong we don’t lose much. If we’re right, we can save a lot of lives. So, what do we do? Perhaps we can advertise the phenomena and encourage people to get to the hospital quickly, even if it is Christmas. In fact, consider this article a public service announcement. If you have chest pains today, get your butt to the hospital pronto!
Merry Christmas!
Ice Cream and Muggings
Feel like mugging someone?
Did you know that the sale of ice cream is strongly correlated to the number of muggings in a given locale? Could it be that consuming ice cream leads us to attack our fellow citizens? Or perhaps miscreants in our midst mug strangers to get the money to buy ice cream? We have two variables, X and Y. Which one causes which? In this case, there’s a third variable, Z, that causes both X and Y. It’s the temperature. As the temperature rises, we buy more ice cream. At the same time, more people are wandering about out of doors, even after dark, making them convenient targets for muggers.
What causes what? It’s the most basic question in science. It’s also an important question for business planning. Lowering our prices will cause sales to rise, right? Maybe. Similarly, government policies are typically based on notions of cause and effect. Lowering taxes will cause the economy to boom, right? Well… it’s complicated. Let’s look at some examples where cause and effect are murky at best.
Home owners commit far fewer crimes proportionally than people who don’t own homes. Apparently, owning a home makes you a better citizen. Doesn’t it follow that the government should promote home ownership? Doing so should result in a safer, saner society, no? Well… maybe not. Again, we have two variables, X and Y. Which one causes which? Could it be that people who don’t commit crimes are in a better position to buy homes? That not committing crimes is the cause and home ownership is the result? The data are completely tangled up so it’s hard to prove conclusively one way or the other. But it seems at least possible that good citizenship leads to home ownership rather than vice versa. Or maybe, like ice cream and muggings, there’s a hidden variable, Z, that causes both.
The crime rate in the United States began to fall dramatically in the early 1990s. I’ve heard four different reasons for this. Which one do you think is the real cause?
- Legalized abortion — in 1973, the Supreme Court effectively legalized abortion in the United States. Eighteen years later, the crime rate began to fall precipitously. Coincidence?
- The “broken windows” theory of policing — police traditionally focused on serious crime while ignoring petty crimes. In the 1980s, sociologists began to argue that ignoring petty crime sent a signal to would-be criminals that citizens will tolerate crime in a given area. Even minor crimes like broken windows could send the wrong message. Police adopted the idea and started cracking down on petty crimes. The message? If minor crimes are not tolerated, just think what they’ll do for bigger crimes!
- The aging population — we’re getting older. Young people commit a disproportionate number of crimes, especially violent crimes. As our nation ages, we become more sedate.
- The “get tough” sentencing movement — politicians in the 1980s began to sponsor legislation to “get tough” on crime by imposing longer, mandatory sentences. One result has been a dramatic rise in our prison population. (In fact, I read recently that the U.S. has 700 people incarcerated for every 100,000 citizens. In Sweden, the equivalent rate is 70 prisoners. Could it be that we’re ten times more criminal than Swedes? Swedes are blonde and they don’t commit crimes. Cause and effect, right? Perhaps we should all dye our hair blonde.)
Which of the four variables actually caused the declining crime rate in America? A lot is riding on the answer. Unfortunately, the data are so tangled up that it’s difficult to tell what causes what. But here are some rules for thinking about correlation and causation:
- If you think X cause Y, always ask the reverse question. Is it possible that Y caused X?
- Always look for a hidden variable, Z, that could cause both X and Y.
Actually, the only way to prove cause and effect beyond a shadow of a doubt, is the experimental method. Which leads us to our question for tomorrow: does smoking cause cancer in humans?
Innovation and the City
I’m looking for a connection.
Let’s say that the city of Groverton has 100,000 residents and produces X number of innovations per year. Down the road, the city of Pecaville has 1,000,000 residents. Since Pecaville has ten times more residents than Groverton, it should produce 10X innovations per year, correct?
Actually, no. Other things being equal, Pecaville should produce far more than 10X innovations. In predicting innovation capacity, it’s not the number of people (or nodes) that counts, it’s the number of connections. The million residents of Pecaville have more than ten times the connection opportunities of the residents of sleepy little Groverton. Therefore, they should produce much more than ten times the number of innovations.
In Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson makes the point that connections are the fundamental unit of innovation. The more connections you can make, the more likely you are to create good ideas. Scale doesn’t matter — more connections are better at a very small scale or a very large scale. This is where cities come in. In terms of innovation, larger cities have multiple advantage over smaller cities, including:
- There are more “spare parts” lying around — Johnson points out that most new ideas are created by combining — or connecting — existing ideas. Existing ideas are “spare parts” that an enterprising “mechanic” can assemble in new ways. (In an earlier post, I referred to this as mashup thinking. Click here.) Cities have more of everything, including more spare parts to fool around with.
- More information spillover — I know a lot about information science. If I keep it to myself, it doesn’t do a lot of good. If I share it with, say some sociologists, we might just come up with something useful. My information spills over to them and vice versa. In Johnson’s terms, the information I share becomes spare parts that the sociologists can plug into their framework. The question is: how likely am I to meet up with a bunch of sociologists? It’s much more likely in a big city than a small town.
- Not only are there more connections, the connections are more varied — if I mainly talk to people who are like me, the chances of something innovative happening are fairly low. It’s when I talk across boundaries — to people who aren’t like me — that interesting ideas begin to emerge. It may happen when I bump into a random sect of sociologists. But if it doesn’t happen then, well… maybe it will happen when I encounter an enclave of entomologists. Or maybe I’ll bump into a bevy of brewers who need to know about information science. In a big city, I’m likely to interact with many more disciplines, opinions, experts, and enthusiasts than I am in a small town.
Does this work in real life? Johnson provides some very interesting anecdotes. More recently, last Friday’s New York Times had an article (click here) on manufacturing and innovation. The article argues that more innovation happens when designers are close to the manufacturing floor. Why? Because of information spillover. Researchers claim that offshore manufacturing reduces our ability to innovate precisely because it reduces information spillover. Connectivity seems to work on the manufacturing floor as much as it does in big cities. Scale doesn’t matter. Bottom line: if you want to be more innovative, get connected.
Sunday Shorts
Pardon me while I unitask.
Interesting items I’ve discovered in the past week or so:
- Who’s the world’s most famous unitasker? It may well be Sherlock Holmes. When presented with a case, he didn’t multitask; he simply sat still and concentrated. It’s an example of mindfulness and meditation that can help us be more attentive, think “younger” and be more creative. For Maria Konnikova’s article, click here. For my recent article on multitasking, click here.
- If the bride is eight moths pregnant, should you mention the fact or pretend not to notice? In “Law and Disorder”, Jonathan Rauch argues that we would be better off if we would just mind our own business. It’s the difference between “hidden” law and “bureaucratic” law. Rauch’s essay is more than a decade old, but I just discovered it. You can find it here.
- Would the economy be better off without MBA students? That was the subject of a recent weeklong debate hosted by The Economist magazine. By a narrow margin — 51% to 49% — readers of The Economist agreed with the proposition — we would be better off without MBA students. Read why here.
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