Ever heard about the Seven-Eleven Rule? Neither had I. The seven-eleven rule is based on the belief that people make eleven decisions about a person in the first seven seconds after meeting them. Apparently, the eleven conclusions you make are the following: Education Level Economic Level Perceived Credibility, Believability, Competence and Honesty Trustworthiness Level of…
If you use your smart phone frequently, you’re less likely to trust strangers. Kostadin Kushlev of the University of Virginia and Jason Proulx of the University of British Columbia came to this conclusion by analyzing data from the most recent World Values Survey. The World Values Survey is a U.S. nationally-representative poll in which participants…
One rainy afternoon I was watching a re-run of a detective show when I began to think about the phrase “beyond a reasonable doubt.” How much doubt, I wondered, is reasonable? If you have an analytics background, you might fall prey to the temptation of trying to quantify the doubt. Using the language of statistics,…
Remember the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster? In 1986, there was an accident during a test at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Ukraine and the resulting explosion released at least 5% of the radioactive reactor core into the atmosphere. The radiation released was 400 times the radiation produced by the bombing of Hiroshima during World…
Even if you win the rat race, you’re still a rat. — Origin unclear In American slang, the rat race is a term used to describe the exhausting, never-ending pursuit of getting ahead financially that leaves no time for relaxation or enjoyment. By saddling ourselves with heavy debts, we are forced to continue working at…
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. This colorful phrase, called Hanlon’s Razor, explains that people aren’t always out to get us; sometimes they just make mistakes. It’s a practical application of Occam’s Razor which states that, everything else being equal, the simplest solution is usually the best one. Hanlon’s…
For many years, I used to brag about how little sleep I needed. 5 or 6 hours was plenty; 7 was a luxury. I even once blogged about the benefits of resting as an alternative to sleeping. I’m not alone. Many (perhaps even most) of my colleagues / acquaintances have told stories about getting very little sleep…
I’ve been doing some spring cleaning and stumbled upon one of my favorite University textbooks: Tversky and Kahneman’s “Judgement Under Uncertainty”. This book taught me the basics of probability, a ridiculously useful skill which I’ve relied on far more frequently than I ever would have imagined. A better understanding of probability can help us overcome…
Many people complain that they get too many emails and there’s even a phenomenon called Inbox Zero. But do we really get that many emails? And do we really want fewer emails? In the book The Tyranny of Email, John Freeman claims the average office worker “sends and receives two hundred emails a day.” According…
Do you know someone you think is a narcissist? A narcissistic personality is characterized by inflated views of the self, extreme vanity, and obsessive self-importance. The term comes from the mythical Greek character, Narcissus, who fell in love with his own image reflected in a pool of water. Entranced by his own beauty, Narcissus stared…