This is the final post in a series on how Americans live, based off the The US Labor Department 2011 Time Use Survey. In sum, Americans work hard. Those with household children under 6 spend on average: 2.85 hours a day doing housework (Women: 3.16) 2.33 hours a day caring for children (Women: 2.59) 30 minutes a day on education And that excludes the hours they spend in the paid workforce! You can’t say they play hard from the ATUS. If children or the elderly aren’t around to be looked after, the leisure time gets dumped into the Television sink – 2.57 weekday hours, 3.19 weekend hours. General (unattributable) game playing time is highest amongst youth – 1.03 weekday hours[…]
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This is part 4 in a series on How Americans Live. The US Labor Department released the 2011 Time Use Survey on June 22. So far, we’ve seen how the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) is designed, why the hours worked measure appears to be low, and, why the computer use measure of 7 minutes is a product of coding design. On Simultaneous Activities ATUS focuses on quantifying primary activities only. And yet, it is the rise of the simultaneous activity that explains a lot about how Americans live. On average, an American spends 1.7 minutes a day listening to music (not radio), as a primary activity. That keyword – primary – is really important. On average, an American spends[…]
This is part 3 in a series on How Americans Live. The US Labor Department released the 2011 Time Use Survey on June 22. A few facts should raise questions: In 2011, each day, at the highest aggregated level, on average, an American spends: 2.75 hours watching TV 43 minutes buying goods and services 18 minutes exercising, playing sports, and recreating 10 minutes on telephone calls, mail, and email 7 minutes on leisure computer use (excluding games) 2.75 hours watching TV, 7 minutes computer use That 2.75 hour watching TV figure ought to stick out like a craw for many analysts, because, by some estimates, 19.25 hours a week is a really low figure. The same goes for 7 minutes[…]
Understanding how Americans live has a lot to do with understanding what they do. Or more specifically, what they remember about doing and how it’s recorded. The following fact from the 2011 Time Use Study (ATUS) should cause some anxiety. “In 2011, each day, at the highest aggregated level, on average, an American spends: 3.57 hours working” How does the US Bureau of Labor know? What if you called 12,479 people randomly on random days and asked them what they did yesterday? That’s pretty much how it’s done. Every day, with a few exceptions (the call center took the day after Christmas off in 2011. The bureau also has no data about New Year’s Day 2007, Christmas Day 2008, and[…]
This is part one of a series on how Americans live. The US Labor Department released the 2011 Time Use Survey on June 22. You are welcome to replicate results using the data files* to mix and mash. In 2011, each day, at the highest aggregated level, on average, an American spends: 8.7 hours sleeping 3.57 hours working 2.75 hours watching TV 1.24 hours eating and drinking 43 minutes buying goods and services 42 minutes socializing and communicating 34 minutes preparing food 18 minutes exercising, playing sports, and recreating 10 minutes on telephone calls, mail, and email 7 minutes on leisure computer use (excluding games) Focus on the drop off. It’s not in a stacked bar chart so you can[…]
Do normative statements cause harm to analytics programs in the long run? This may be a bit meta because I’m talking about the effect that an activity that analysts do every day has on what gets selected to study. A normative statement expresses a value judgement. Consider the following three statements: The strawberry campaign contributed to the acquisition of 1000 new customers out of the 10000 acquired last month. The strawberry campaign only contributed to the acquisition of 1000 new customers out of the 10000 acquired last month. The strawberry campaign failed, only contributing to 10% of new customers acquired last month. Which is the most normative? Consider the next three statements: The strawberry campaign contributed to the acquisition of[…]
Claude C. Hopkins wrote a book in 1923 entitled ‘Scientific Advertising‘. It’s still in print. It’s worth paying attention to, as he already made all the mistakes we’re making. (So why pay twice?) “The competent advertis[er] must understand psychology. The more he knows about it the better. He must learn that certain effects lead to certain reactions, and use that knowledge to increase results and avoid mistakes…We learn, for instance, that curiosity is one of the strongest human incentives. We employ it whenever we can. Pufed Wheat and Puffed Rice were made successful largely through curiosity. Grains puffed to 8 times normals size. “Foods shot from guns.”… A department store advertised at one Easter time a $1,000 hat, and the[…]
Adblock Plus is a browser add-on. It allows users to block display ads. It comes with a pre-loaded block list, and, it allows users to create white-lists and black-lists. It promises ‘annoyance-free web surfing’. Here are the usage statistics from the Mozilla install base: (Roughly 15,000,000 daily users, note the tell-tale elephant function, it’s mass. Also note instrumentation tracking loss on at least two days.) As you can see below, they’re not all from the anglosphere. There’s very high representation from German, French, Russian, and Polish Mozilla language settings. The vast majority of the install base uses Microsoft Windows systems. Why do people use Adblock Plus? They did a survey in late 2011 to find out. ~75% said distracting images[…]
From Emanuel Derman’s book “Models. Behaving. Badly.” and the Modeler’s Hippocratic Oath: “I will remember that I didn’t make the world, and it doesn’t satisfy my equations.” “Though I will use the models I or others create to boldly estimate value, I will always look over my shoulder and never forget that the model is not the world.” “I will make the assumptions and oversights explicit to all who use them.” (p. 198) Models are useful, but they’re not the world. *** I’m Christopher Berry.I write at christopherberry.ca
There’s an interesting article from The Atlantic about a patent that Apple acquired earlier this year. As with all things in patents, the devil is buried very deep in the details. The idea of the patent is pretty interesting. The best way to protect your identity is to have many. The best place to conceal a fake identity is between two truths. The ideas is: Create multiple fake identities Read components from your real identity Meld the fake identities with your real identity Fake those identities, and make them do activity, across a network This is novel, especially at the dawn of the mass-bot and recommendation engine era. It might really confuse systems and cause overall degradation of content. It’s[…]