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October 31, 2005
Data farming vs data mining
In mining, you extract a hunk of something that is either durable
and non-reactive, or burns for a short time. Plus, you have lots of
tailings to throw out. It's not self-sustaining or pretty.
Personally, I don't want to mine. I want to do something valuable and
sustainable.
Here's an alternative paradigm: data farming. In farming, you start
from a seed or an immature plant, place it in an appropriate growth
medium, and tend it with nutrients. Crops, and perhaps seeds for the
next cycle, repay your efforts.
You also have a centuries-old tradition of testing and variation from
which to improve yields over time, and reduce wasted effort and
excess fertilizer. This cycle of planting, nurturing, harvesting,
and learning is how less than 2% of our population now feeds the
rest of America, and beyond.
I contend that we should look at direct marketing analysis as data
farming, and to use the metaphor to justify (with ample support)
investments that will pay off marketing cycle after marketing cycle.
And many of us are already doing data farming: extending successful
promotional elements to new prospect lists and new vehicles, learning
from last season in ths season's re-activation programs. This is
farming, sustainable and nurturing, not at all like mining. And smart
farmers don't just produce; they learn so that next season will be
even better.
-- Ken Novak
Posted by omor at 02:55 AM | Comments (0)
October 22, 2005
Do not aspire
The [peace] movement’s assumptions were based on moral innocence
—on an inability to imagine the horror in which Iraqis lived and
a desire for all good things to go together, for total vindication.
It amazes, simply amazes me, that this claim to superior intelligence
and imagination and moral acuity floats as a proprietary privilege here.
It is a warning: do not aspire.
-- from lengthy how-to-argue demonstration at TPM.
Posted by omor at 05:18 PM | Comments (0)
October 14, 2005
Paul Krugman columns here
TimesSelect, the NYT new pay-per-view scheme to ration
access to some of its columnists, has induced some SPAM-like
workarounds.
Krugman's columns are reposted on blogs, but with obscure
bylines.
BY P*A*U*L K*RU* GMAN
BY P. DIDDY GMAN
Jane Galt would not approve.
Posted by omor at 06:17 AM | Comments (0)
October 10, 2005
Joel Kotkin's San Fransisco
San Francisco is headed to damnation and ruination ? Not in the
slightest. In an increasingly suburbanized country with 300 million
people, headed for 400 million by 2050, there's going to be ample
demand for a unique adult Disneyland, from tourists, sojourning
youths and those who, although they may not do much, can buy the
best urban lifestyle money can buy. San Francisco is the city that
knows how to be that.
-- Joel Kotkin.
And San Francisco, despite all its natural advantages, has lost
jobs and much of its middle class, mutating into a playground for
young, affluent liberals.
-- Joel Kotkin, again.
Posted by omor at 07:32 PM | Comments (0)
October 04, 2005
Barak Obama: reaching out without selling out
Barak Obama accommodates without conceding any ground.
Americans are suspicious of labels and suspicious of jargon.
They don't think George Bush is mean-spirited or prejudiced, but
have become aware that his administration is irresponsible and
often incompetent. They don't think that corporations are inherently
evil (a lot of them work in corporations), but they recognize that
big business, unchecked, can fix the game to the detriment of working
people and small entrepreneurs. They don't think America is an
imperialist brute, but are angry that the case to invade Iraq was
exaggerated, are worried that we have unnecessarily alienated
existing and potential allies around the world, and are ashamed
by events like those at Abu Ghraib which violate our ideals as a
country.
Posted by omor at 03:33 AM | Comments (0)