EchoDitto Blog

      Quantifying Organizing

      By: Emily Thorson  |  August 23, 2004

      John Allen Paulos has written a column that builds on a paper by Brookings scholar Jonathan Epstein about how social norms spread. Basically, when you're looking to decide how to behave in a given situation, you take a sample of those around you. If most people around you are doing things in a particular way, you stop sampling and go with the majority. If opinion is split, you enlarge your sample size until you reach a point where there is a majority, and then go with them. Most social norms are so firmly established that this process is unnecessary (driving on the right, not wearing socks with flip-flops, etc). But in certain situations that require conscious decisions--ie, voting--it can become quite relevant.

      For me, the most revealing part of Epstein's paper was the idea of people consulting a sample and then expanding that sample until they hit a majority. This has implications for a couple of organizing principles--the social networking model (DFA NH) and the "influentials" model (Kerry IA).

      When viewed through the lens of Epstein's model, the social networking principle is an effort to create solid patches of support by jump-starting the sampling process. You convince one person, then you ask them to push their belief on their friends. "Here, look at me, I support this candidate, therefore it is the norm. I'm your sample! Really I am!"

      The influentials model, however, builds on a factor that Epstein doesn't mention--that certain people (a) are more likely to be included in a sample, simply by virtue of knowing more people, and (b) have opinions that carry more weight. If you can get a majority of those people on your side, then by the time folks get around to gathering their sample, chances are your influentials will be in it.

      Epstein's model is especially useful in understanding this year's primaries, where the stakes were a little different than usual. In most elections, we hope that people pick their candidates based what they stand for. But in January 2004, the buzzword was electability. All anyone cared about was electing the candidate who they believed everyone else wanted (Michael Kinsley had a great article about this phenomenon), and the process became even more explicitly similar to the establishment of a social norm. more

       


      TXT to the MAX

      By: Emily Thorson  |  August 18, 2004

      This odd article in the NYTimes about the relationship between text-messaging and increased thumb usage includes the following account of the Guinness Book of World Records texting competition:

      "The champion, Kimberly Yeo, a 23-year-old student, won the contest by typing 'The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human' in 43.66 seconds, shattering the mark of 67 seconds set in September 2003."

      Impressive. more

       


      GIS: More than Maps

      By: Emily Thorson  |  August 3, 2004

      I get frustrated when people hear "GIS" (geographic information systems) and immediately think "oh, it's a map." Well, yes, it is a map--in the same way that a database is "just a spreadsheet." More importantly, it's a way of interpreting and relating data.

      As we, as a society, begin to aggregate more and more data, we're faced with the challenge of using that data in a meaningful way. The task is even more difficult when some of your datasets are incomplete. Let's think about it with the following example--a great use of GIS by the UN.

      The most important sentence in that article is that the system "allows users to overlay maps from multiple servers housed at development institutions worldwide to create a customized thematic composite map on their own computer." In one institute, they might have soil quality information for major metropolitan areas. In another, they have the latest population statistics for the entire country. Or perhaps a file that has the address of every power plant. Say you're in charge of reconstruction in a given suburb. Without the map, how would you be able to visualize this information? One person sends you a spreadsheet with soil quality, soted by city. Another one sends you the population statistics, and then you receive a Word document with the addresses. How do you make sense of all this without a single axis that brings them all together?

      The visual manifestation of the map--the physical north-south-roads-mountains-cities picture--is not always necessary for interpreation. Imagine that what you really needed to know is whether any power plants were located in sparsely populated areas. You don't even have to look at a map to find this information--the map is just a way of relating the data. The machine can read the map and spit your answer back out at you without you ever seeing a compass rose.

      And the most fun part is that once you have the basic layers, finding new data sets is great fun. more

       


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