Author: Lloyd Morgan
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E-Prime and the Retiring of ‘To Be’
A form of constrained writing, E-Prime strives to completely restrict the use of the verb to be as a way to prevent implications of certainty and objectivity. As part of the This Column Will Change Your Life series, Oliver Burkeman discusses the merits of E-Prime andĀ unambiguousĀ language. To think about and function in the world, [Alfred…
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Words and Phrases Lost in Translation
Coming from the author’s confusion in relating to her German-speaking Balkan partner, the question is asked:Ā can phrases and words that we give great weight to in our native tongue truly be translated across cultural and language barriers. Could it really mean the same thing for him to say “I love you” in English if he…
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The Transformative Power of a Narrative
Can a narrative attached to an everyday object increase its objective value? That was the question posed by Rob Walker (author of The New York Times‘Ā Consumed column) and Joshua Glenn (author of Taking Things Seriously) when they started the Significant Objects Projectāan experiment designed to test whether a series of stories created about an object…
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Credit Card Customer Profiling and the Luhn Algorithm
From a Q&A with a VISA fraud prevention agent on reddit: Some years ago, someone wrote a paper claiming he could get the age, gender and race only from the credit card purchase history. It worked very well. Today, with your full purchase information, we can even “guess” your income range, number of dependants and…
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The Irrational Use of Credit Cards
Our irrationality toward money and inability to fully visualise the impact of distant events is how credit card companies thrive and many bank balances suffer. That’s the conclusion one draws after reading this article from Time that looks at a number of studies showing that we fail miserably in making logical decisions about money when…
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What People Pay For
As a natural follow-up to his Monetizing Your Web App article [previously], Dan Zambonini looks at user needs and what people are willing to pay for: Time: Convenience, Efficiency, Immediacy Scarcity Comfort Esteem: Id, Desirability, Self-Image, Ego Belonging: Relationships, Sex, Affection Survival: Health, Safety, Wellbeing Financial Security: Wealth, Success, Career Entertainment: Emotion, Experiences Intellectual Stimulation:…
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Three Words of Startup Advice
Posted one at a time to his Twitter feed and spread using the #StartupTriplets tag, Dharmesh Shah–founder of HubSpot–has distilled his best startup advice into forty-seven three-word chunks: startup triplets. My favourite ten: Hire generalists early. Hire specialists later. Invest in culture. Encourage diverse thinking. Decide with data. Accept imperfect data. Encourage rational debate. Make…
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What a Non-Programmer Should Do In a Startup
Twenty things a non-programmer should do in a startup; a list compiled by Spencer Fry in response to a question asked on Hacker News: Writing the copy for the website. Mainly keeping the support documents up-to-date. Doing all the business related tasks. Doing all the customer service. Handling all incoming e-mail. Doing all of the…
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Creating Effective Messages
Nature has published a short interview with psychologist Robert Gifford looking at the “interface between psychology and climate change”. Noting the problem of pubic distrust of scientific messages that are delivered with uncertainty, Gifford proposes five elements of effective messages*: It has to have some urgency. It has to have as much certainty as can…
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An Analysis of Supermarket Checkout Times
An analysis of supermarket checkout times has shown that express lanes (for people with fewer than 5 items, say) are not always the most efficient checkout route for time-sensitive shoppers. Dan Meyer, a high school maths teacher, has done the hard work (providing his data and analysis) and came to the following conclusion: [Express lanes]…