Tag Archives: perceptions

The silent Supreme Court judge

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The New York Times examines the five year silence of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in cases that have argued before the court. While there are a number of possible reasons given for this silence, I want to know two things:

1.  Does this silence improve his standing in front of others (in the legal community, the general public) or does people dislike him because of this?

2. How does this silence affect the workings or camaraderie among the Supreme Court justices? Do they lose something in their court proceedings when Thomas is silent?

How Wal-Mart plans to regain its edge

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Here is an interesting summary of Wal-Mart’s corporate plans for the near future. The headline of the article says it all: “Wal-Mart, humbled king of retail, plots comeback.”

Three years ago, Wal-Mart ruled for convenience, selection and price. But today it is losing customers and revenue, and smarting from decisions that backfired.

Wal-Mart is not in danger of ceding its place atop the retail world. But competitors have begun to chip away at its dominance.

Over the last year, revenue at Wal-Mart stores open at least a year has fallen by an average 0.75 percent each quarter, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers. Revenue rose by an average of nearly 1.7 percent at Target, 8 percent at Costco and 5.9 percent at Family Dollar.

To fight back, Wal-Mart is again emphasizing low prices and adding back thousands of products it had culled in an overzealous bid to clean up stores. It’s also plotting an expansion into cities, even neighborhoods where others dare not go.

Even as the article talks about stagnant or slightly declining sales at existing stores plus some questionable decisions (like reducing the number of products on the shelves), the main issue seems to be perceptions. On the business side, Wal-Mart has been challenged, particularly on the lower end by dollar stores. But business has not tanked and Wal-Mart still thinks it has new markets to tap in the United States, particularly in urban areas. What do investors and shareholders think – is it just about stronger growth right now? On the public image side, stores like Target have offered an enticing alternative. And yet Wal-Mart has changed the layout and design of its stores to look more like Target and this seems to have helped. Ultimately, the article says Target’s revenues are still one-sixth of that of Wal-Mart.

It sounds like Wal-Mart thinks they need to make some changes. There is no guarantee that any business, even a behemoth like Wal-Mart, will continue to expand or even be profitable. And just by virtue of its size, Wal-Mart’s actions will continue to be scrutinized.

Scorecasting: Freakanomics for the sports world

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A movement has been growing in the sports world in the last few decades: the use of lots of data in order to make decisions. Some of this data goes against “conventional wisdom” such as ideas of whether players can be “clutch” (some good stuff on which NBA players you would want to take the final shot with the game on the line) and what should actually be valued in free agents (MLB’s shift toward statistics like on-base percentage over home runs and RBIs).

A new book, Scorecasting, tackles a number of sports issue from a quantitative perspective. Read an interview (including a few examples from the book) with one of the authors here.

It will be interesting to see just how mainstream these sorts of ideas become. Does the average sports fan, or even the average sports broadcaster, want to rely on these kinds of data as opposed to their intuition or their feeling? Numbers may provide a better explanation – but numbers have all sorts of perceptions tied to them including the idea that people are just twisting the data to fit their explanation and that numbers about sports are developed by geeks who can’t play sports (or something along these lines).

I, for one, would like to have more quantitative data available to me when watching sports. Information like the batting average of a batter for particular parts of the plate (usually split into nine segments) or on a particular count would be useful. The data might seem overwhelming but ultimately, I think it helps people see the patterns underlying their favorite sport. For example, a home run hit on an 0-2 count in the 9th inning to win the game is impressive in its own right. But to know how rarely home runs are hit on the 0-2, even more so for some batters, adds to the feat.

Portland faces mocking on television show

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Some large cities have better images than others. Portland generally has a positive reputation, particularly among urban sociologists and planners who have admired the city’s restrictions on urban sprawl.

So what happens when Portland takes some mocking from a new television show named “Portlandia”?

For years, many residents here have reacted with practiced apathy and amusement toward the national fascination with Portland. Outsiders and media critics have glowed over everything from its restaurants to its ambitious transit system of streetcars and light rail. Yet with “Portlandia,” the flattery has given way to mockery, however gently executed, of this liberal city’s deliberate differentness…

In a popular line from the show, which is on IFC, Mr. Armisen’s character describes Portland as a place “where young people go to retire.” Sure enough, economists have shown that the city in recent years has drawn a disproportionate amount of young people, and that many of them end up being underemployed…

The show has limits as social science. While many parts of Portland feel like one big group hug, the city is a complicated place, struggling with government budget cuts, manufacturing losses and the housing downturn even as demand for office space downtown has risen. The Gilt Club restaurant is just a few blocks from a Salvation Army shelter.

If Portland residents do not like the portrayal of their city, they shouldn’t worry too much: the Independent Film Channel, home to “Portlandia,” is not a very well-known channel.

Of course, how residents see one’s city can differ quite a bit from the view of outsiders. And television is not necessarily a good reflection of reality. It will be interesting to watch how Portland residents continue to respond to this show, particularly if the humor has an edge to it or takes on sacred cows.

More Americans eating at home

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One of the questions to emerge out of this recent recession is which pre-recession patterns will return once the economic climate improves. One report suggests that although spending levels have increased again, eating at home might be a more permanent pattern:

Restaurants traditionally have led other types of businesses out of a recession. This time, they’re at least a year and a half behind retailers. Sales of clothing grew 5 percent last year and autos rose 11 percent, as Americans started feeling better about their finances. At casual sit-down restaurants like Outback Steakhouse, the increase was just 1 percent. Some analysts say that could be the new norm…

Americans lead the world in restaurant spending. About 44 percent of food dollars are spent outside the home — a figure that started rising sharply in the 1970s, as more women joined the work force. Full-service restaurant revenue rose 5 to 7 percent a year in the decade leading up to the Great Recession, which halted growth. Over the next decade, visits to restaurants are forecast to increase less than 1 percent a year, according to the NPD Group. That’s less than the population will grow.

Instead of handing their money over to mediocre eateries during the week, people are saving up for the occasional nice meal, says Stifel Nicolaus analyst Steve West. Meanwhile, cooking has become hip, says Rick Smilow, president of the Institute for Culinary Education, where registration for recreational courses was up 10 percent last year.

It would be interesting to see more data on this: how many of these meals at home are made out of mostly fresh ingredients? What kind of food are people spending money on – taking that restaurant money to buy more expensive items or trying to eat on the cheap? How much less are people spending on food overall as they eat out less?

The perception about eating at home might be crucial. The idea that cooking is now “hip” could be tied to a number of factors including more upscale grocery stores (the equivalent of shopping at Whole Foods versus Wal-Mart), a number of celebrity chefs, and around-the-clock cooking shows. Eating at home may be good for the financial bottom line but it will appeal to a lot more people if it is cool.

“The Wire” creator defends depiction of Baltimore

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In response to comments from the Baltimore Police Commissioner that the television show The Wire is going to harm  the city, creator David Simon defended the show:

Others might reasonably argue, however that it is not sixty hours of The Wire that will require decades for our city to overcome, as the commissioner claims. A more lingering problem might be two decades of bad performance by a police agency more obsessed with statistics than substance, with appeasing political leadership rather than seriously addressing the roots of city violence, with shifting blame rather than taking responsibility.  That is the police department we depicted in The Wire, give or take our depiction of some conscientious officers and supervisors. And that is an accurate depiction of the Baltimore department for much of the last twenty years, from the late 1980s, when cocaine hit and the drug corners blossomed, until recently, when Mr. O’Malley became governor and the pressure to clear those corners without regard to legality and to make crime disappear on paper finally gave way to some normalcy and, perhaps, some police work.  Commissioner Bealefeld, who was present for much of that history, knows it as well as anyone associated with The Wire.
We made things up, true.  We have never claimed otherwise.  But respectfully, with regard to our critique, we have slandered no one.  And to the extent you can stand behind a fictional tale, we stand by ours – and more importantly, our purpose in telling that tale.

It would be interesting to consider whether television shows and movies and other fictional works can have a significant impact on what people think about locations (and even further, whether it influences people’s decisions to move to certain places). The Wire was a critically acclaimed show but one with relatively low rating and even with more widespread DVD availability, it is still not a mainstream show.

There certainly is some link. Depictions of the inner city have impacted decades of suburban residents. I’m reminded of the Japanese businessmen who my father worked with when I was younger who knew two things about Chicago: it was the home of Michael Jordan and it was home to gangsters immortalized in film.

Now whether these depictions should reflect reality or some idealized or stereotyped view is another question. Simon defends The Wire on the grounds that the show was intended to showcase a different set of priorities:

But publicly, let me state that The Wire owes no apologies — at least not for its depiction of those portions of Baltimore where we set our story, for its address of economic and political priorities and urban poverty, for its discussion of the drug war and the damage done from that misguided prohibition, or for its attention to the cover-your-ass institutional dynamic that leads, say, big-city police commissioners to perceive a fictional narrative, rather than actual, complex urban problems as a cause for righteous concern. As citizens using a fictional narrative as a means of arguing different priorities or policies, those who created and worked on The Wire have dissented.

And this is a perspective or story that is rarely discussed in much depth.

I would be curious to hear how Simon would want people to view Baltimore after watching the show. Should they identify with the residents? Should they dislike the institutions? And ultimately, what should or could the viewers do to help change the situation?

Considering how dangerous the Internet might be for children

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While the Internet has made available a wealth of information for the average person, it has always been dogged by some perceived downsides. One persistent argument is that the Internet is dangerous for children. A recent sociological study from Europe suggests that while adults might consider the Internet dangerous for children, children themselves don’t have the same perception (and here is a second article on the same study):

A sociological study on a large scale conducted in 25 countries among 25,140 European Internet users aged nine to sixteen, suggests that the dangers of the Internet for Young people are often overestimated. Funded by the European Commission and led by the London School of Economics the study also shows that parents often have an incorrect assessment of what their children see as a traumatic or unpleasant [experience]…

One of the main findings of the survey is that what would be objectionable content or a traumatic experience for adults is not necessarily for children. Thus, 14% of young Europeans say they have seen pornographic images or sexual activity on the Web, but only a third of them felt this was a painful experience.

The survey also reveals a surprising paradox: if parents tend to overestimate the trauma that objectionable content can generate, they also underestimate the kind of experience that their children may have had. Thus, 40% of parents whose children have seen images of sex think that this does not happen to them, and this figure rises to 56% for recipients of aggressive messages.

There seem to be several findings here and I’m not sure I would draw the same conclusion about the first one as the first story did (though I haven’t look at the complete study or the data):

1. Kids don’t think these are painful experiences online. Does this matter what the kids think? Just because they don’t think it is dangerous or harms doesn’t mean that it is good. Or the parents could still think that looking at pornography or experiencing aggressive behavior is a negative even if the kid shows few signs of being affected.

I think the headline here could be phrased differently to better reflect this finding: perhaps something like “Parents, children have different perceptions about Internet dangers.”

It will also be interesting to see how the children of today react to things on the Internet (or the broader media) when they themselves are adults.

[The second story adds to this: “According to an EU survey, European teenagers are barely aware of the privacy issues raised by such websites. The survey found that 50% of them do not hesitate to give out personal information on the Web, which can remain online forever and can be seen by anybody.”]

2. A decent number of parents are not aware of the experiences that their children have online. Not too surprising. It would be more helpful to know why this is the case: is there a significant percentage of parents who don’t care what their kids do online? Or are there are large percentage of kids deliberately hiding certain online activities?

[Indeed, the second story focuses more on the lack of parental knowledge. One possible explanation for the knowledge gap: “A UK-based body for protecting children online says that children find it hard to confide in their parents about their experiences online.”]

Chicago’s crime rate down for 23rd straight month – but is this the public perception?

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The Chicago Tribune reports that the November crime statistics for Chicago look good. Here are a few of the important statistics:

Superintendent Jody Weis announced November’s crime statistics Sunday, saying the decrease amounted to the 23rd consecutive month of lower overall crime in the city.

Property crimes dropped overall by 2.2 percent compared with last year’s figures, officials said…

There were 12 fewer slayings in November compared with last year’s figures, a 2.8 percent dip. This year there were 412 slayings reported compared with 424 for the same time last year, officials said. These numbers were lower than figures reported in 2007 for the same time frame; that year had the lowest number of slayings since 1965, police said.

Overall violent crime dropped 9.8 percent, with criminal sexual assaults dropping by 8.5 percent compared with last year, robberies dropping 11 percent and aggravated assaults 11.9 percent, officials said.

This sounds like good news. In fact, how have I not heard about this before – now 23 straight months of decreasing crime rates? One would think that Chicago officials and police would be trumpeting this all over the place: crime is going down!

But on the other hand, this reminds me that the public perception of crime rates is what really matters. In recent years, there has been a lot of talk about teenagers being shot. The nightly news and local media still seems to revolve around ghastly crimes. Does the average Chicago citizen or resident of the region know that crime in Chicago has gone down for nearly two years?

And ultimately, what would the crime rate need to be so that people wouldn’t see Chicago as a den of crime? A place like Celebration, Florida can experience one murder and people wonder if it has all gone wrong. Would Chicago be seen as a relatively crime-free place with 350 murders a year? 300? The crime rate could go down for another 6 months or a year but there has to be a lower number where people (and perhaps the media) start perceiving Chicago differently.

How rural homelessness might differ from urban homelessness

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An Illinois sociologist argues that rural homelessness can look quite different from urban homelessness:

“In rural America … a lot of homelessness is hidden from the community,” said Judi Kessler, associate professor for the department of sociology and anthropology at Monmouth College. In a big city like Los Angeles, “homeless is easily identified and easily spotted.”

As a result, residents conjure up images of the homeless in larger cities, which contrasts sharply with homelessness in rural Illinois…

Instead, some rural homeless people “couch surf” by living with a friend until they are no longer wanted. They then move in with a new friend or into a rundown, low-rent home that may not have proper utilities. This process, while very telling, goes largely unnoticed by the general population.

“I think it’s fair to at least speculate that homelessness is much bigger than is immediately evident to our eyes,” Kessler said

Being homeless in rural America also presents unique challenges, which were discovered last spring by a group of students in Goble’s class who were assigned to produce a documentary on rural homelessness.

The group decided to focus on one person who had some bad luck and was staying at a Monmouth shelter…

Among the problems she faced were the lack of mental health services and public transportation in a town of 10,000 residents. Health services are at least 30 minutes away from the shelter, yet the female didn’t have a vehicle. She also had kids, and child care was hard to come by.

This brings up the issue of the social problem of rural homelessness – if people can’t easily see it, then they don’t know it exists. And if they are unaware, it is hard to motivate people to act. Is there a concerted effort in Galesburg or other rural areas to tackle this issue? How can social services be distributed in rural areas in a way that people could access them on a regular basis or in a time of crisis?

A second thought: how prevalent is rural homelessness? Are there figures from certain areas or across the country? I wonder how many cases of rural homelessness are linked to not knowing anyone in the small community.

The importance of perceptions: thinking about the golden age of flying

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There seems to be a lot of grousing about air travel these days, particularly with a flood of recent stories about full-body scanners and more aggressive pat-downs. These complaints raise a question: is flying today more troublesome and less glamorous than in the past? Some experts say today is actually the golden age for flying:

Whether it’s fees, crowded planes, no food or surly service, people will complain about the current state of air travel.

They’ll talk wistfully about the good old days of flying, of a bygone era when a glamorous stewardess delivered white-glove service with a smile, they had meals with real silverware and a courtesy cocktail was offered free on such carriers as Pan Am, TWA, Braniff or Eastern.

The so-called golden age of air travel in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s has passed, they’ll say, just as those airlines have.

But has it? No, say some veteran fliers and industry analysts. With historically affordable fares to nearly everywhere, greater options for service if you’re willing to pay, and new information and entertainment technology, there’s never been a better time to fly, they say.

So some experts that suggest by some objective measures, such as price and service level, flying is now better than it was in the past. But the issue really seems to be whether passengers feel that this is the case. And this is what matters for airlines – if potential customers perceive that flying is difficult and then choose other forms of travel, these perceptions are real indeed.

What could be going on here? A few thoughts:

1. Memories and nostalgia are tricky things. People can romanticize the past and forget the troubles they experienced then.

2. Some of the security procedures instituted after 9/11 seem to irritate people. It adds an extra level of hassle and can make people feel like they are not trusted. On the other hand, there has not been a major airline incident in the US since 9/11.

3. Service and entertainment options may have increased but perhaps passengers expect even more. Does having more entertainment options offset sitting in cramped airplane seats?

4. I would be curious to know how many people actually enjoy flying versus feeling that it is the best, or perhaps only, transportation option to get them where they want to go.

h/t The Infrastructurist