Posted in indicators on May 11th, 2008
Rules of Thumb is a fine website for those of use who enjoy proxy metrics, the things you use to judge when you can’t judge the real thing.
Picking a restaurant is an obsession on the site. One rule of its many rules is attributed to CBS’s Andy Rooney, who suggests you avoid cute names because [...]
Posted in indicators on Apr 12th, 2008
I’ve almost got too much good stuff for my story in BI This Week about offbeat metrics. Stacey Barr, “the performance measure specialist” in Australia and Zach Gemignani at Juice Analytics in North Carolina both came through with insight-provoking cases.
Zach calls metrics for those hard-to-reach places where bookkeepers don’t go “franken-measures.” Stacey calls them “proxy [...]
Posted in indicators on Mar 31st, 2008
I could easily find a parking place in Berkeley on Saturday! What could it mean? On a normal afternoon in Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto, I usually find just one space open, and often I have to drive around the block once…. Ah, it’s the end of Easter week and a bunch of the university people have [...]
Posted in culture on Mar 27th, 2008
The Sierra Club, once a leader in bottom-up organization, is about to flip over and assume a top-down orientation–in fact, one much like the big corporations it usually opposes.
Posted in events on Feb 25th, 2008
Around the corner from the TDWI World Conference I spotted a billboard-size sign: “We have 22 years left on our lease. We are here to serve you.”
What’s it mean? I understood other signs nearby, such as the $14.95 and the “chopsticks combo special.” I also understood “we are here to serve you.” But for 22 [...]
Posted in culture, indicators on Jan 31st, 2008
A new source in the education-testing business tells me about a “huge cultural collision” between the “sensate, feeling types and the new racetrack bettor types.”