http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2010/03/05/opera_sees_downloads_triple_since_introduction_of_eu_browser_ballot_screen
How many downloads of opera happened before Microsoft introduced the "Browser Ballot"?
Thursday, 25 March 2010
I have doubled my gym time since yesterday... WOW!
I really did… taking into account I spent two minutes exercising yesterday. Today I extended it to four. :-)
Today I am going to depart from the BIG numbers and dig inn how misleading is to use percentages without any reference point.
How many times you have heard of the fastest growing industry, or company, or country? In fact, it is a very useful marketing resource when you are just not BIG enough….
Th trick is…what is your starting point? 100 dollars in little money, but If I have a revenue of 100 dollars, that will double my revenue. Little effort, big headlines. If you are GE, well… it will be a drop in the ocean.
That the number of members of a religion, customers of a company or expediter in education grew 300% might sound a big change, but it all depends of how small the initial point is. In most of the cases, the issue was so small that almost any effort will show enormous growth.
I nevertheless appreciate any message congratulating for my commitment to excercise :-)
Today I am going to depart from the BIG numbers and dig inn how misleading is to use percentages without any reference point.
How many times you have heard of the fastest growing industry, or company, or country? In fact, it is a very useful marketing resource when you are just not BIG enough….
Th trick is…what is your starting point? 100 dollars in little money, but If I have a revenue of 100 dollars, that will double my revenue. Little effort, big headlines. If you are GE, well… it will be a drop in the ocean.
That the number of members of a religion, customers of a company or expediter in education grew 300% might sound a big change, but it all depends of how small the initial point is. In most of the cases, the issue was so small that almost any effort will show enormous growth.
I nevertheless appreciate any message congratulating for my commitment to excercise :-)
Wednesday, 17 March 2010
Explained! Mechanics of world economy in the 21st century in 130 words
Firm X is located in China. Has a product call BuyMe. It is a good product (sold at $1) and the marketing campaign is effective. It appeals to 0.1 of the people in the country, who buy the product during the first year since its release.
Firm Y is located in France. Has a product call PurchaseMe. It is a good product (sold at $1) and the marketing campaign is effective. It appeals to 0.1 of the people in the country, who buy the product during the first year since its release.
Firm X then sells 1,325,640 items the fist year. Firm Y sells 62,048 items the first year. Firm X sells 21 times more items than firm Y. Firm X buys firm Y. Firm X moves production off-shore ;-)
Firm Y is located in France. Has a product call PurchaseMe. It is a good product (sold at $1) and the marketing campaign is effective. It appeals to 0.1 of the people in the country, who buy the product during the first year since its release.
Firm X then sells 1,325,640 items the fist year. Firm Y sells 62,048 items the first year. Firm X sells 21 times more items than firm Y. Firm X buys firm Y. Firm X moves production off-shore ;-)
Tuesday, 16 March 2010
Disagree...and do it loud. It pays.
The fallacy of the example or how what happened to your grandmother does not count.
How many times have you been offered a testimonial or "personal story" to reinforce an argument...? or read a piece of news of the sort "all in the town are happy with the Major, however Mr. John Doe disagrees saying that..."? Many times it is not clear why the opinion or experience of that person is more relevant (or at all) than the rest of the people in the same group or how that opinion is a reflection of a significant share of the population of the town/region/country.
For exampple, You have probably heard the news about the recent criticism of the Obama administration to cancel the moon base program, which made front news in several major media outlets like the BBC.
Most of the media cited Jim Lovell, commander of the Apollo 13 mission, as saying that the decision was "catastrophic".
Without entering into the politics of the decision or if it is a wise one, I would like to focus on the numbers around these news. The article does not indicate why Mr. Lovell´s opinion is more valid that those of other astronauts, neither is cited that he is talking for part or the entire US astronaut community.
My point: how relevant is this "individual" opinion when given no point of reference.
According to the the Wikipedia, "Twenty-four of the Apollo program astronauts left Earth's orbit and flew around the Moon (Apollo 7 and Apollo 9 did not leave low Earth orbit).
Twelve of these astronauts walked on the Moon's surface."
That means that Obama´s decision has been criticized by 1 of 24 of all US astronauts.
Then the title could be written (to much less effect, of course) to "4% of the astronauts" consider the decision of the Obama administration about the Moon program as catastrophic"
Or, if you are part of the Obama staff, you could always write "96% of the astronauts do not have a negative opinion of the decision of the Obama administration about the Moon program."
More on this topic tomorrow.
How many times have you been offered a testimonial or "personal story" to reinforce an argument...? or read a piece of news of the sort "all in the town are happy with the Major, however Mr. John Doe disagrees saying that..."? Many times it is not clear why the opinion or experience of that person is more relevant (or at all) than the rest of the people in the same group or how that opinion is a reflection of a significant share of the population of the town/region/country.
For exampple, You have probably heard the news about the recent criticism of the Obama administration to cancel the moon base program, which made front news in several major media outlets like the BBC.
Most of the media cited Jim Lovell, commander of the Apollo 13 mission, as saying that the decision was "catastrophic".
Without entering into the politics of the decision or if it is a wise one, I would like to focus on the numbers around these news. The article does not indicate why Mr. Lovell´s opinion is more valid that those of other astronauts, neither is cited that he is talking for part or the entire US astronaut community.
My point: how relevant is this "individual" opinion when given no point of reference.
According to the the Wikipedia, "Twenty-four of the Apollo program astronauts left Earth's orbit and flew around the Moon (Apollo 7 and Apollo 9 did not leave low Earth orbit).
Twelve of these astronauts walked on the Moon's surface."
That means that Obama´s decision has been criticized by 1 of 24 of all US astronauts.
Then the title could be written (to much less effect, of course) to "4% of the astronauts" consider the decision of the Obama administration about the Moon program as catastrophic"
Or, if you are part of the Obama staff, you could always write "96% of the astronauts do not have a negative opinion of the decision of the Obama administration about the Moon program."
More on this topic tomorrow.
Monday, 15 March 2010
Mr Vaynerchuck´s amazing number followers!!!
Wow, I though when I learned yesterday about Gary Vaynercuck. He gave a motivational speech in Web 2.0 Expo conference in NYC. He is the new guru of wine in the US, master of social media applied to business. I am quoting: "I am killing it with Wine videos". He has recently signed a deal for a book for 1M dollars and is regularly invited to speak in traditional media and conferences.
According to VagabondGuide, he has around 850K followers. Nearing one million!, damm it, that is an audience. Well...it depends very much were you live. And that´s the beauty of BIG places like the US, or to some extent China that have a common internal language.
Which takes us to the the point of the worth of absolute numbers given without any point of reference.
Now, let´s play with the numbers. Total population of the US: 307M. The 850,000 is about 0.27% of the total population. If you were Spanish you would need 126,000 followers to be "killing it", and only 21,000 in Switzerland.
So let´s give some points of reference and make your own opinion.
- The district I used to live in (1 of 21) in a big city in Spain has a population of 146,000.
- I have around 60 contacts in LinkedIn. Just three degrees of separation puts me in contact to 653K people.
- The number of people believing in "New age"-type religions is 0,4% of the US population
According to VagabondGuide, he has around 850K followers. Nearing one million!, damm it, that is an audience. Well...it depends very much were you live. And that´s the beauty of BIG places like the US, or to some extent China that have a common internal language.
Which takes us to the the point of the worth of absolute numbers given without any point of reference.
Now, let´s play with the numbers. Total population of the US: 307M. The 850,000 is about 0.27% of the total population. If you were Spanish you would need 126,000 followers to be "killing it", and only 21,000 in Switzerland.
So let´s give some points of reference and make your own opinion.
- The district I used to live in (1 of 21) in a big city in Spain has a population of 146,000.
- I have around 60 contacts in LinkedIn. Just three degrees of separation puts me in contact to 653K people.
- The number of people believing in "New age"-type religions is 0,4% of the US population
Welcome to Playing With BIG numbers!
A place where to find my reflections about how reality is shaped by the fact that we are 6 billion people, or how our perceptions are distorted when numbers are BIG!!
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