Opinion Polling and Sh*t

 2 April 2021

"Our apartment painting committee conducted a useless poll among all the residents, and the most horrible colour has come out as the winner"  I said.

The wife patiently nodded.

"This winning colour is the colour of Shit" I said.  "Imagine having to look out of the window and seeing this colour of shit every morning" I said getting really agitated now.

"Well, it won in the polls" she said.

"Being a Market Researcher, I know how to manipulate polls.  All you need to do to make people opt for a bad option is to make all the other options even more disgusting" I said.

"Well, as a housewife, I have faced the brunt of all your useless Market Research outcomes all these years. Like me, you just need to change your reality, and then acceptance becomes easier" she said philosophically.

"What do you mean? This shitty paint colour will look shitty whatever one does.  I challenge you to change reality" I shouted.

Walking away calmly she said : "Everyday from now on you are eating a lot of beetroot".

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

MR and Quantum Physics

Image
  30 March 2021 Carlo Rovelli's writings on Quantum Physics is amazing and made me ponder about the close connection that exists between the principles of Market Research and that of Quantum Physics. One of the interesting implications of Quantum Physics (QP) is that the properties of objects seem to change depending on whether they are being observed or not.  Quantum entanglement means that two objects seem to be able to affect each other even when they are too far apart for any information from one to reach the other : "a photon on venus could be changed by a photo taken in Venice".  This weird science finds practical use every day, forming the basis of our latest technologies : from computers to nuclear power. So how does this relate to our humble Market Research? There was a time (before large data bases automatically collected real-time behavioural data) where consumer behaviour data was the exclusive domain of the MR industry.  Behavioural data was largely coll...
Read more

Algorithms, Statistical Rigor, and WhatsApp wisdom

Image
  4 April 2021 Coffee - Good or Bad? My mother is one of those charming, spiritual souls who is, however, a bit gullible when it comes to the "wisdom" that gets shared in her many Whatsapp groups.  One week it would be about the goodness of drinking milk with honey, and the next week it would be about the heathy way to drink water (always sitting, never standing).  Despite my frequent protests, she would diligently forward these whatsapp wisdom to me - and I would spend half my time cleaning my inbox.  But gullible as she is, even she was a bit taken aback when on a particular day she got 2 contradictory messages about the benefits or harmfulness of coffee.  Both claimed to be from scientifically conducted research.   She vaguely knows that my profession has some "research" in it, and she promptly asked me the other day why is research wisdom so contradictory.  So here is my simplistic explanation for this.... Firstly much of nutritional research is...
Read more

Where is AI taking us?

Image
  29 March 2021 While I believe in the positives of the ongoing AI revolution in our lives, I got some contrary (and highly relevant) view-points from a conversation between the Nobel laureates Kazuo Ishiguro and Venki Ramakrishnan on the impact of AI on our civilization.  A quick summary: *  Inbuilt Biases :  AI takes decisions based on large data sets which come with inbuilt existing biases (e.g gender, race).  Once acceptable biases e.g. about slavery if they are managed by humans can be changed over a period of time. But when these biases are inbuilt into an algorithm - and are opaque - it will be very intimidating to challenge and question, and will be very difficult to over-turn. AI will become a kind of Delphi oracle. The most worrying aspect : it is not clear how these existing biases can be removed. *  Deep Fakes  created through AI is going to be an increasing problem - and will make it difficult for humans to differentiate truth from fiction...
Read more