by david allan van nostrand | Jun 29, 2020 | Items in the News
“Lead, follow, or get out of the way.” Media mogul Ted Turner said it, and so did General George S. Patton, but they weren’t the first. That was Thomas Paine, the revolutionary whose 1776 pamphlet, Common Sense, called for American independence from...
by david allan van nostrand | Jun 22, 2020 | How to tell good research from bad, Using Information
There is a skeptic inside each of us. Tell people there’s an invisible man in the sky who created the universe and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure. Skeptics want to see the world for what it...
by david allan van nostrand | Jun 15, 2020 | Artificial Intelligence, Big Data
Neither would millions of people until Lee Lantz came along. A seafood merchant, he found a mild and flaky fish that tasted great. Its name, Patgonian Toothfish, was as unappetizing as its looks. He couldn’t change its appearance, so he made up a new name. He called...
by david allan van nostrand | Jun 8, 2020 | Focus Groups, How to tell good research from bad
The father of the focus group despised how his methodology had been hijacked and bastardized. Robert Merton said “Focus groups are supposed to be merely the source of ideas that need to be researched.” They were meant to be no more than a jumping off point and a...
by david allan van nostrand | Jun 1, 2020 | Conformity, Human Behavior, Psychology
Are you tired of hackneyed phrases? Threadbare, moth-eaten sayings that have been used so tediously for so long that they’ve lost whatever meaning they ever had? Me, too. Recently I heard someone say “It is what it is” for the third time in a single day....
