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July 15 To Kill a Wall Street JournalDid you ever have to ask to buy less from a business and be told "no" even if you're willing to pay the current price? And then they tell you, actually there might be an alternative for you to buy less, but you have to pay more than you're paying now? Yeah. Luckily for me, I got to witness this today. Exhibit A of Perverse Pricing Practices. It started with my long overdue action to cancel the physical delivery of the Wall Street Journal. I've found myself spending more and more time perusing the Journal's website rather than reading the print copies. On most days, the print newspaper goes directly from my mailbox to my recycle bin. I cannot bear to think about all the wasted energy, labor, slaughtered trees and elevated landfills as a result of making, mailing, delivering, recycling and eventually decomposing these papers. So I made a mental note to cancel the delivery of the print paper, once and for all. Should be easy, don't you think? In an age of infinite consumer choices and options -- you can order a grande-size Cappuccino from Starbucks with double-shot espresso, soy-based milk, extra foam, and hazelnut-flavored syrup added -- you would expect that changing from a print/online combo to an online-only subscription should not require much more than checking or unchecking a box online, right? Turned out wrong. After fumbling around on their website for such a solution in vain, I called their toll free number, and explained to a customer service rep my request to stop receiving the print paper while maintaining my access to online edition. As I spoke, I imagined that he would say with glee and relief, "No problem! I can do it for you right NOW!" After all, I'm saving money for them (reducing their marginal cost of servicing me to virtually zero) and not even asking for a price cut. But he said there was no way he could do it, the reason being that I have a Students account (for which I'm qualified as a quote-unquote Educator, also covered under the category). "So the account entitles you to both the print and the online editions of the Journal." he said matter-of-factly. Is that an explanation at all? I'm not talking about what I'm entitled to - I'm talking about what I want, which, apparently inconceivable to him, is less than what I'm entitled to. Some explanations are just hilariously ridiculous. Like the cardboard sign hung on the door of the dry-cleaner that I frequent: "Closed on Wednesday due to The Economy." As if the linkage between the temporary closure of a tiny dry cleaner and the throbbing heart of this colossal monster called The Economy were beyond self-evident. Like my imaginary email auto-reply: "Out of the Office due to Modern Man's Existential Dilemma". Hello? Anyway, after much clarification from both sides, it became clear that there is technically no way to stop receiving the physical paper while retaining the online access. A possible alternative, he said, is that I cancel this account and get a regular online-only subscription, at $103 a year. Which is more than what I pay now for the print-online combo. Incredible, isn't it? So I politely asked to speak to his manager. The lady introduced herself to me as a "supervisor", which immediately sank my heart because clearly her role was to supervise those manning the phones rather than to revise the pricing mechanism (let alone the business model) at the Wall Street Journal. So I was not surprised when she gave me the same answer as before. I was tempted to offer her a free lecture on product customization, optimal pricing, or the environmental consequences of frivolous production and consumption. Or how consumers' shifting media consumption patterns (i.e., tomorrow the print newspapers would be what the audio cassettes are today) would demand a fresh new business model for the newspapers and their failure to adapt quickly and radically enough has brought them to the near defunct place where they are now. But I knew it's useless to say anything. Under today's mazz-like corporate structure with thinly sliced departmentalization, asking her to change anything would be like asking your toe to scratch your ear. But I still concluded the conversation by making a kind suggestion, in the vague hope that it could be passed on to the decision-makers (maybe she would date the marketing director some day and mention this bizarre phone call from a nutty customer). So, unable to kill it, I'm still holding on to (or, if you will, recycling) the print newspaper. It just occurred to me that there's another solution: if any of you have the free time to read a physical copy of the Journal (although if you're reading this, you probably have too much time), I can have the thing delivered to you instead! November 06 Explaining the Blue vs. Red Divide
Why are the Blue States blue and the Red States red? Such was the question that suddenly started to bug me during my solitary lunch hour today. People tend to attribute it to the cultural or ideological differences between the states' residents: hence the Bible Belt, the Rust Belt, the Coastal Liberals, blah blah. But I wondered: to what extent can we explain the election results purely by looking at simple demographic and socioeconomic factors? Curiosity offers rewards but also charges a price, as I've learned from experience. This time I wasted 2 perfectly good hours on this pet research project, first pulling some data from the U.S. Census Bureau, and then developing a statistical model to explain what variables could have predicted whether a state would go to Obama or McCain. The model I used is a pretty straightforward binary logistic regression model. To those statistics geeks among you, the table below shows the estimates. But here is the gist of my findings. In plain terms, the factors that significantly predict a Blue State (vs. a Red State) include, in the order of importance:
Factors that were found to have no bearing on the Blue vs. State difference include: education, poverty level, and the percentage of whites. What really surprised me, however, is the predictive power of the model, which is an astounding 92%. In other words, the model would have correctly predicted the election results of 46 out of 50 states (I left out Missouri since the votes are still being counted as of now). Among the 29 states that went to Obama, 27 are correctly predicted by the model. The two anomalies are Indiana and North Carolina, both of which had narrow margins below 1% of the total votes (Indiana 49.9% vs. 49%, and North Carolina 49.9% vs. 49.5%). Among the 21 states carried by McCain, 19 are correctly predicted - the two exceptions are Arizona, McCain's home state, and North Dakota. (I cannot find an explanation for North Dakota. But it only has 3 electoral votes, so who cares?) Geez. Don't you just love the benefit of hindsight? By the way, my model predicts that Missouri would go to McCain. Let's see whether it pans out.
Table 2: Model Prediction Hit Rates
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