The Measurement Standard: Blog Edition

Video: How Roger Craig Used Statistics To Win On Jeopardy!

From the SAS Voices blog comes this video of Jeopardy! champ Roger Craig at the SAS Global Forum. He describes how he reverse-engineered the game to predict which questions would be asked and devised an optimal training strategy. Includes some interesting background on how they film the show (they tape 5 shows a day) and some good tactics should you ever appear on the show (find the Daily Doubles and bet big). --WTP

Watch live streaming video from sasglobalforum at livestream.com

Social Media Effectiveness and Black Unemployment

We like to think of social media as a tool to "bring people together" to accomplish mutually beneficial goals. But it's also clear that social media is a tool with which we gain advantage over other people. This can be especially valuable when finding a job.

More social media connections means more favoritism in determining who gets a job and who doesn't.

The Measurement Geeks of the Month: PR News' 2013 Measurement Hall of Fame Inductees

On May 15th, PR News will induct six longtime public relations measurement heavy hitters into its Measurement Hall of Fame at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Congrats!

• James Fetig, recently retired chief, external relations, for the Corporation for National and Community Service
• Diane Lennox, PR services manager for SAS
• David Michaelson, managing director for Teneo Strategy
• Katie Paine, chief marketing officer, News Group, and chairman & founder, Salience/KDPaine & Partners
• Mark Weiner, CEO of PRIME Research
• Donald K. Wright, Harold Burson Professor and Chair in Public Relations, Boston University’s College of Communication.

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On Your Phone Camera, Nobody Knows You're A Dog

Remember "On the Internet nobody knows you're a dog?" Well now it's true for your phone photos, too.

Pixtr is a phone camera app that automatically adjusts eyes, nose, jawline, complexion, etc. to make people look more attractive in photos. I think I'm gonna take some photos of myself right away. --WTP

Nice People Are More Likely to Win Nobel Prizes. Also, an Intro to Scientometrics.

The Dr. has not won an Nobel prize. Yet.

Nobel prize winners, compared to non-winners, tend to let other scientists take first-author credit, and this is true before they win their Nobel prize:

"...peers of Nobel laureates who were not as successful tried to maintain first authorship for themselves far more often, garnering more glory for themselves. By their forties, Nobel laureates are first authors on only 26 percent of their papers, as compared to their less accomplished contemporaries, who are first authors 56 percent of the time. Nicer people are indeed more creative, more successful, and even more likely to win Nobel prizes."

This is just one of the fabulous tidbits included in today's book excerpt from delanceyplace.com: Nice Scientific Guys Finish First, from Samuel Arbesman’s The Half-Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date. (And if you are not familiar with Delancyplace, they'll email you a daily excerpt from an interesting new book. Go sign up, it's great.)

The Measurement Mavens and Menaces of the Month, as Revealed by Ragan's Survey

by Katie Delahaye Paine

Ragan and NASDAQ OMX just released the results of what could be the most comprehensive study of attitudes about measurement in a decade. Click here to download the Ragan_PR Measurement_study. They surveyed 1467 public relations professionals, asking them everything from how satisfied they were with measurement, to “Do we need standards?” The results could be incredibly depressing if there weren’t a few signs of progress. For example, most respondents said that measuring outcomes was more important than measuring outputs. 

Gay Marriage: Why Have People Changed Their Minds To Support It?

Views of same-sex marriage and the percentage who...

Public relations is often about encouraging people to change their opinions, or at least becoming open to the prospect. One of the largest changes in U.S. opinion on public policy in recent years has been the rise in support for same sex marriage.

And so the Pew Research Center's data on why so many people have recently changed their minds about gay marriage is intriguing. There are excellent interactive charts here, and here. And plenty of discussion of the data here.

The most common reason given (37% of those who changed their minds) is that people have family, friends, or acquaintances that are gay/lesbian. What does this say about how and why people change their opinions? --WTP

The Pew Research Center: State of the News Media 2013

The Pew Research Center State of the News Media is an annual report on American journalism. From the Preface:

The State of the News Media 2013 is the tenth edition of our annual report on the status of American journalism. The study contains special reports on how news consumers view the financial struggles of the industry and how the local, cable and network TV news landscape has changed in recent years. It also includes analysis of the main sectors of the news media and an essay on digital developments.

Just Say "Neigh" to Horsemeat: Gorkana's Tip Sheet On the Scandal

In case you haven't had your fill of the horsemeat scandal, The Gorkana Group has researched and prepared an infographic (click on it to see it bigger) with the high points of the controversy and its coverage:

• Over 200,000 social media mentions,  and over 21,000 mainstream media mentions.
• Mainstream media discussed details of the scandal and politicians’ outrage, social media was dominated by humour.
• Statistics showing a rise in sales for vegetarian brands and independent butchers indicate genuine consumer anger.

Meanwhile, here in the U.S., we do not have horse slaughterhouses, and do not import beef from any of the countries where the contaminated beef was found. Still, some have voiced concern that a similar scandal could occur, as "The absence of a strong national program of animal identification means that our farmers are actually more at risk." -- Bill Paarlberg, editor, The Measurement Standard

Did Social Media Predict The Grammys?

The short answer: "Social Media Is No Nate Silver" -- unless hindsight bias rules your analysis.

How well did social media do at predicting the winners of the 55th Grammy Awards? The infographic to the left (click on it to see it bigger) includes some answers, thanks to Mashable. It shows SM data as of Feb 7th and the Grammys were aired the evening of Feb 10th.

So how did SM do at predicting the winners?

For Best New Artist, Facebook predicted the winner, but Twitter and Instagram did not.

For Song of the Year, YouTube's second most played tune was the winner. But note that several non-nominees got more play than nominees, esp. outlier Psy and brushed-off Bieber.

For Record of the Year, song plays on YouTube picked the winner decisively, but Facebook and Twitter stats did not.

For Album of the Year, the number of Facebook followers chose the winner decisively, but Twitter did not.

Analysis: While it appears from this infographic that Facebook and YouTube did predict a couple of winners, before the event you'd not have been able to know which of several social media would be the best predictors.

The big point to keep in mind here is that social media is playing off-key anyway: We probably should not expect SM to predict the Grammys, given that the judges use different criteria than popular opinion.

For a markedly more comprehensive analysis of this question, see "Digital Notes: The Scorecard on Social Media's Grammy Predictions."

To view the all of the nominees and results visit The Grammys website.

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What's Your News IQ? Test Your Knowledge of Current Events

You're in PR: You ought to know this stuff, easy.

Test your knowledge of prominent people and major events in the news by taking the Pew Research Center 13-question News IQ quiz. Then you can compare your results with those of 1,041 randomly sampled adults asked the same questions in a national survey. The survey includes a mixture of multiple-choice questions using photographs, maps, and symbols. And, oh yeah, I only got one wrong so let's see you beat that. : )  --Bill Paarlberg, editor (Thanks to CKCO TV for the image.)

Katie Paine's Best of 2012 Measurement Events

It was a big year, full of public relations and social media measurement events. Here is Katie Paine's Best of 2012 Measurement:

1. The Conclave and the Dublin Declaration
   If only Congress could work as well. In just 15 months, The Social Media Measurement Standards Conclave has developed, proposed, and in some cases finalized standards for social media content, engagement, reach & impressions. They’ll be getting out the standards for influence, sentiment, advocacy, and value between now and June. So yes, Virginia, there are standards for social media measurement.

Yet More Data to Show that Marketers Are Clueless About Data

Just a couple weeks ago we posted about research implying that marketers are out of touch with what their audiences want. Well, thanks to Rob Peterson at Biznology, here is a lot more evidence that marketers are behind the eight ball. His article, "21 Stats Show CMOs Leap Before They Look at ROI," lists, yes, 21 studies that imply that CMOs are having a tough time with, not just ROI, but with making sense of the data. If they even try. For instance, #16: 28% of CMO’s say their decisions are based on gut instinct. Go read the whole list right now. --WTP

What the Arab World Was Talking About, Jan 13 - 17, 2013

The SocialEyez Weekly Top 5 for January 13 -17, 2013

1. Saudi preacher praises Egypt in Friday sermon in Cairo Mosque
2. Algeria, South Africa tie in football
3. Kuwait opposition hold ‘Karamet Watan 6’ rally to dissolve parliament
4. New episode of Saudi series ‘On the Run’ stirs up debate
5. Egypt train crash kills 19, wounds 107

This weekly report highlights the five topics that generated the largest volume of discussion across Arabic language social media during the Sunday-Thursday Arab world work week. The report is derived from crawling the web and indexing hundreds of thousands of Arabic-language, user-generated results. Visit the SocialEyez blog for the entire report.

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Measuring the Value of Apple's Brand with Crime and Consumption

Apple charges more for its products because they are designed better and work better. And they are worth it. Right? How do we know? Here are two recent clues. Today, Business Insider published this chart, showing that iOS users earn more and spend more than users of other phone operating systems. So, do they spend money for better products, or do they just spend more money? Here's another clue: The NYTimes reports that crime is down in the Big Apple, except for Apple devices, for which thefts are up. To sum up: Criminals and wealthier people prefer Apple products. Is that the measure of a brand's worth? -- Bill Paarlberg, Editor

U.S. Flu Map from Google Flu Trends: Yep, it's going around.

Our readers in the U.S. may be wondering if they have noticed an unusually high level of colds and flu activity this winter. These Google.org Flu Trends graphics prove that it's not all in their (stuffed up) heads. Get this: Google has found that search activity is a good estimator of the prevalence of flu: "We have found a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms." Google Flu Trends is updated every day. Read more about the U.S. flu outbreak in today's NYTimes. -- Bill Paarlberg, editor

Best and Worsts, Predictions, and Summaries: Your List of 2012 Lists

Sick of all those end-of-the-year lists of Best or Worst or Predictions or whatever? If not, you'll enjoy our annual List of Lists, mostly related to social media and public relations measurement. And to really get the flavor of 2012, put on Gangnam Style, the music video that debuted last summer and since has become the first in Internet history to be viewed more than a billion times. (That's PSY in the video, to the left.) Happy New Year! -- Bill Paarlberg, editor.

Go Ahead, Eat That Chocolate -- And Have Some More Coffee, Too!

Just in time for another season of chocolate overindulgence, here's some good news from the New England Journal of Medicine: A country's per capita chocolate consumption is strongly positively correlated with the number of its Nobel laureates. (Messerli, F.H.: "Chocolate Consumption, Cognitive Function, and Nobel Laureates"). So go ahead, have some more chocolate. (But beware of making false assumptions of causation based on correlation.)

Thinking about another cup of coffee? Go ahead and indulge while you read "The Case for Drinking as Much Coffee as You Like" in The Atlantic. Happy Holidays! -- WTP

The End of the World As We Knew It: Google Ad Revenue Exceeds All U.S. Print Ad Revenue

I guess we knew the writing was on the wall, but it's a shock nonetheless. Thanks to Business Insider.

NPR: What Americans Actually Do On an Average Day Off

Here's an update to the post of a few weeks ago ("NPR: What Americans Do All Day Long") that tells us what they do on their weekends. Read the post on Planet Money.

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