I should have grown up to be a researcher. Easy money – no stress.
Take this for example: someone made money doing a survey that discovers the vast majority of men at a nude beach don’t object to seeing nude females.
Well, duh.
As a follow up, the survey team will find out if the majority of people in a steak house restaurant object to seeing medium rare prime rib.
Here is another interesting study: IQ Dips More on Email Than Pot. The study claims that distractions from emails and instant messages make people
brb
Where was I?
Oh, right.
I was wondering how one could measure a change in IQ during periods of high-tech intrusiveness. IQ isn’t like blood pressure, as far as I know – but then I see a lot of email, so maybe I’m getting dumb. Who cares? Let’s chat!
Even if your research doesn’t pan out – just make something up. There is good money in fake numbers.
I’d like to start publishing my own research white papers. I’ve decided to start analyzing raw data at my disposal – like the log files for OdeToCode. Here is a break down of RSS readers hitting the site since July 1.
| Name | % of hits |
| SharpReader | 38.1% |
| RssBandit | 23.6% |
| NewsGator | 17.2% |
| OmeaReader | 10.4% |
| RssReader | 5.6% |
| FeedDemon | 3.0% |
| Others | < 3% |
Based upon these statistics, I’ve concluded that .NET is the only viable platform for building a popular RSS feed reader. I plan to publish these findings alongside some glossy pie charts and sell them to analysts in need of market research.
Who wants to invest?
Comments
To tell the truth - I might have missed some RSS readers because I only picked out the ones I recognize. Kaisa saw through me.
Now I am fully disclosed, and exposed as a sham researcher.
Thanks, Roy and Kaisa.
As you point out and are informed by Roy and Kaisa, research is not an easy thing. It's difficult to determine 1) Hypothesis 2) Characterization and Construction of model 3) Experiment and Data Collection and 4) Analysis and Evaluation. Most problems in research start with the hypothesis and don't fully consider the questions asked. Data collection is another area where bias is introduced. The measure of independent events in the scientific process is subject to bias. Let me give you an example:
HYPOTHESIS: Do nude females eating medium rare prime rib that have just checked their emails prefer .NET or Java based RSS readers?
CHARACTERIZATION: Purchase 30 pounds of prime rib. Host a dinner at the house for any and all strippers in your town/city. Provide wireless email access at the house.
MODEL CONSTRUCTION: None needed; just invite. Wait, install hidden cameras all over the house. Make sure wife (or girlfriend or whatever) and kids are gone for the weekend.
EXPERIMENT: Ask all women to strip, serve dinner and send each woman an email. Provide the women with an RSS feed and a number of different RSS readers.
DATA COLLECTION: See hidden cameras above. Other forms of data "collection" are permitted as well.
ANALYSIS: Review hidden camera footage. If time permits, review polaroids (that the women should sign to validate the set of observations).
I'll leave the evaluation to you. As you can see, it is easy to construct a hypothesis. It is further clearer that the observations in this experiment may become biased as most observations from the data collection phase ignore the choice of RSS reader.
I use SharpReader. I wasn't aware that RSS was available on Linux boxes or in Java (just kidding).
---O
I think I'd need volunteers to help out.
I can cook prime rib, though. I am practiced in the arts of blackened rib. Or is that blackened arts of rib. Whichever.
Gotta go. IM calls.
I'm a software designer, but I have to support everything I write as well as other pieces of legacy software, and we also have internal IM and internal client can also call you.
It's very hard to think solutions through when every hour you're being interrupted.
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Sage)
Is what it puts out.