Qualitative Decision-Making

AIDS & Obits The author first starts off by talking about how homosexuality has evolved from being considered a mental disorder to being sinful/immoral to being a medically accepted, albeit fairly alternative and rare, form of human behavior and lifestyle. However, many of the stigmas of being gay continue and this continues in the form of how obituaries that relate to single men.

Indeed, the cause of death is rarely mentioned or, as the article notes, there is often a telltale clue that gives an indication as to what happened. QA review was conducted of whether and when AIDS deaths were listed in an obituary for single men that died between the ages of 18 and 50. In 1986, there were five people that died of AIDS, at least that were identified, and that took up nearly a fourth of all listed causes.

However, that number was zero out of nine in 1980 and one out of thirteen in 1984. Data Scientist in the 21st Century This article talks about the new job title of "data scientist." These are people that use data and data collection methods in new ways and they are apparently in very short supply in the employment and government sectors despite the huge need for them.

Some universities have tried to get in front of the problem and create new programs and degree options so as to fill the need for data scientists. One such program is a master's program at North Carolina State. They are cited as a more modern example of the Wall Street "quants" of the 1980's and 1990's. They are typically much better served by a permanent and ongoing position rather than operating in a consultant role.

One challenge is that such data scientists thrive when they are among their own rather than regular executives and employees who typically deal with simpler frameworks. YouTube TED Summary The video starts off about talking about a conference of great minds who met at a conference. The video then cuts to a video of a Malcom Gladwell talking about the invention of spaghetti sauce. This man, a man apparently named Howard Moscowitz, was a brilliant scientist.

He goes off on a tangent and talks about how much aspartame should go into Diet Pepsi. They wanted a sweet spot between 8 and 12 but there was no clear answer as the data was "a mess." He came to the conclusion that there was not a "Perfect Pepsi"….but rather "Perfect Pepsis" (plural). He gave similar advice to Vlasic and Campbell/Prego. Prego faced the fact that they had superior sauce to Ragu but it was not selling as such.

Moscowitz found that two thirds of the market was being serviced by existing types of sauce.