2014 market research book list

Coming to the end of the year, I I thought I would share a list of the best books I have read in 2014 that I think other market researchers might like to read.  Now not all of these are new books by any means so forgive me if you have yourself read half of them.

This will make you smarter

John Brockman

This book is a compendium of scientific and philosophical ideas in one of two page essays on quite a remarkable cross section of topics. There are some really exciting thought packed into this book that I think market researcher could make good use of. I think reading it really did make me a little smarter!

Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?

Philip E. Tetlock

Philip Tetlock's thinking has had more influence on how I think about conducting market research than any one person this year. I was introduced to this book by Walker Smith from the Futures Company and I would recommend that anyone who has an interest in the science of prediction should read this book.  Learn that political experts are not quite as good as chimps tossing coins at predicting things!

The Signal and the Noise: The Art and Science of Prediction

Nate Silver

I realise this book is a few years old now, and I wish I had read it sooner. There are so many really important ideas stuffed into this book that market researcher can use in their every day research. Its both inspiring and useful.

Strategy: A History

Sir Lawrence Freedman

This small thumbnail belies a bloody thick book which I have to admit to not to have read every page of.  It looks at strategy from all sorts of angles from war through to politics and summarizes the thinking of every major strategist in history including the likes of Sun Tzu, Napoleon and Machiavelli.  There is loads of great thinking for market researchers to digest. And probably even more valuable incites for anyone running a business.   It contains a detailed look game theory and the trials and issues with trying to apply strategy in real life. There is some sage advice in this book

Decoded: The Science Behind Why We Buy

Phil Barden

This book is a really helps explain the basics of shopping decision making and is a compendium of behavioral economic theory, an important topic for nearly all market researchers to understand - I really like the way it uses visual examples to explain some of the theory making it an effortless read. This book should be on every market researchers shelf.

100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know about People

Susan Weinschenk 

This book should really be titled, 100 things market researchers designing surveys and presentations should know about people!  ...And everyone involved in either of these task encouraged to read this.   Loads and loads of really clear, sensible advice.

The Curve: Turning Followers into Superfans

Nicholas Lovell

I read this after reading a very enthusastic linkedin review by Ray Poynter, thank you!  It persuaded me to buy it. There are some nice radical ideas in here about how to market things by giving things away and at the same at the other end of the scale offering premium high price solutions for the those willing to pay for them.

The Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know About Football is Wrong

Chris Anderson (Author), David Sally (Author)

I rather immersed myself in reading sports stats books this year. The way that data is transforming sporting strategy, there are lessons to be learnt by the whole of the market research industry. As an English person with a love of football, I feel rather a bounden duty to promote the Numbers game which looks at how statistical data has changed how the game is played. I loved this book and I am afraid I bored senseless everyone I knew who had any interest in football quoting incites from it. I also read Money Ball this year too which is the classic opus on how a proper understanding of stats transformed the fortunes of a major league baseball team, it is a great story and lovely read.

Who owns the future?

Jaron Lanier

This book has an important message about the impact of the digital economy on our future I cite from the book directly as it best explains  "In the past, a revolution in production, such as the industrial revolution, generally increased the wealth and freedom of people. The digital revolution we are living through is different. Instead of leaving a greater number of us in excellent financial health, the effect of digital"  Worth a read!

The golden rules of Acting 

Andy Nyman

This is a lovely little book, you can read in one short sitting. Why though do I recommend market researchers read it?  Well not because it teaches you anything about acting more about life and humanity and dealing with failure and the right approach to challenges.  There is not much difference in my mind to going for an audition and going and doing a pitch presentation. I took some heart from reading this book.






Want to see some other book recommendations?  Try this site:

http://inspirationalshit.com/booklist#

Your 2015 recommendations?

Love to hear your recommendations for books I might read in 2015  tweet me @jonpuleston

How to make the perfect guess in a pub quiz

Having spent the last few months researching and studying the science or prediction and also being quite fond of pub quizzes here is my guide to how to make a perfect guess in a pub quiz using some of what we have learnt.

Step 1: Ideation

Ask people to think of the first answer that comes into their heads.

If they think of an answer they should not shout out the answer,  this could corrupt the purity of other participants thinking. They should put up their hand to indicate they have thought of and answer and write it down. The should also write down how confident they are on a scale of 1 to 3.  Each player can think of more than one answer but they must score their confidence of each one.

Confidence range:
1 = a hunch
2 =  quite confident
3 = certain

Answer time:
Under 5 seconds = certain
5+ seconds = assign certainty based on personal confidence measure...

Step 2: Initial idea evaluation

After the point at which everyone gives up, you then share your answers from the team and the level of confidence.

Rules for deciding if the answer is correct:

• If more than one person has come up with the same answer in under 5 seconds then its almost certain that this answer is correct.
• If anyone is certain about their answer, there is a high chance this answer is correct.
• If more than one person comes up with the same answer and the combined confidence score is higher than 3 then there is quite a high chance that answer is correct and suggest you opt for that.

If there is a conflict or no answer scoring more than 2 point then go to step 3....

If nobody has come up with an answer the team is satisfied with go to step 4....

Step 3: Answer market trading

Each person must rate each answer by buying or selling shares in each answer choice with some "virtual money" .  They can buy or sell up to 2 shares in each answer.

Tip: If a person has 2 ideas that both are "hunches" then the first idea research has shown this is around 30% more likely to be correct.  Take this into consideration when making your buy / sell decisions.

e.g. if I think an answer is definitely correct I buy 2 shares. If I think its correct but I am unsure I buy 1 share,  If I think its definitely not correct I sell 2 shares, If I am feeling a little uncomfortable that it is wrong I sell 1 share.   Everyone has to commit to buy or sell - no body is allowed to sit on the fence.

Add up the total money traded in each idea and choose the winner.

If you want to be super nerdy about how you do this then don't simply add up the amount bet.  Answer should be weighted somewhat as there is not a linear relationship between betting confidence and prediction accuracy. Having studied a data from a large number of predictions we have found that prediction accuracy of somone who claims to be very confident is not twice as good as someone who has a hunch its only about 20% better (see chart below).  And people having a hunch are only 10% better than people making a total guess.  Interestingly there is little difference between someone who has a hunch and someone who says they are fairly sure.

Further more when you look at people betting against things and comparing to betting for things the prediction accuracy of the amount bet varies in an odd way. Smaller negative bets are slightly more predictive we found than large negative bets.  Strong positive bets on the other hand were more predictive than small positive bets but those that bet more than 2 were actually slightly less predictive than those that bet 2.  Hence our 2 point betting scale.

A more accurate betting aggregation process should score the amount bet like this:

-2 =  -20% 
-1 =  -20%
+1 = +10% 
+2 = +20% 

If on either of these aggregation processes no idea has a positive trading value then go to step 4....

Step 4: Idea stimulation

If you are not satisfied with any answer,  then all the team members should voice any "clues" they may be thinking about e.g. "I think his name begins with B" or "I think its something to do with football". Your thoughts could help another person think up the answer.

The scientific terms for this is called "Dialectical Boostrapping" - which basically means the sharing and discussion of ideas, which has been shown to help improve crowd wisdom generation processes. Find out more about this here Herzog and Hertwig (2009)

The more small clue you share they greater the chance of one of them triggering a thought in a team member. Note these can also be negative clues e.g. its definitely not...

If this process stimulates any ideas then go back to step 3 to evaluate them...

Step 5:  Picking the best of a bad bunch of guesses

If you are left with more than one answer that nobody is particularly satisfied with,  then pick the first answer the first person thought of.  This one has the highest chance of being correct.  It wont necessarily be right but it will have a slightly higher chance.

Advanced techniques:

Performance weighting your teams predictions

If you keep track of each individual's answer trading record over the period of several quizzes (.i.e if they bought 2 shares in an answer that eventually proved to be correct their personal balance would be +2). You can then start to weight your teams market predictions. You can do this by giving each person in the team a different total pot of money to bet based on their past performance record in correctly predicting the right answer based on how much money they would have won.

Note it would take several weeks studying at least 100 predictions to get a good idea of the prediction ability of each player so it would be a mistake to calibrate this after only one or two quizzes - luck has far more important role to play thank skill in the short term.

You might also want to assess how individuals confidence levels change when they have drunk 1 unit, 2 units 3 units of alcohol and start removing budget (or indeed giving extra budget!) as the night progresses!

Encouraging the team to think like foxes not hedgehogs

What buggers up the predictions of many pubs quiz teams can be the bullish viewpoint one or two individuals.   Having a strong opinion about things generally I am afraid does not correlate very well with actually being good at making predictions.  If you want to read up some evidence on this I recommend  you order this book all will be explained.

The team should foster an atmosphere where its OK to change your mind,  its not a battled between right and wrong , and should not be scared of failure.

Avoiding decision making biases

If the question is multi-choice make sure that your answer is no biased by the order effect or anchoring in the way the question is asked.  For example yes/no questions more people pick yes than no for irrational reasons.  When presented with multi choice options slightly more people pick the first choice for irrational reasons.   By being aware of this you can be conscious that your decisions are being made objectively.

Important Note/disclaimer:

The advice is a fantasy methodology for making a perfect prediction.  I don't advocate you using it in a real pub quiz. Firstly for practical reasons,  In reality the speed at which most pub quizzes progress you probably would not have the time be able to implement this approach.  Secondly it may also not be in the spirit of a fair pub quiz to use this technique in real life - it might be considered cheating!

Fun = Feedback

We have recently done an experiment where we asked respondents to complete a series of survey questions designed in different ways and then at the end of the survey asked them how much fun it was to answer each question.

We then analysed the results to look at the time they spent answering each question, the volume of feedback and the level of data granularity as measured by the level of straight-lining.

In total we had data like this asked across 20 different questions and each question was asked in 2 or 3 different ways.

In every single instance the most fun version of the question encouraged respondents to spend more time answering the question, generated more feedback and resulted in least straight-lining.

Now think about a survey from a consumers point of view, it is as much a piece of entertainment as anything. Most people do survey in the spare time as a bit of fun as an alternative to perhaps playing games or going on Facebook.

 Like any form of entertainment, the more entertaining it is, the more time you we dedicate to consume it.

MR Personality test

Do you want to find out what type of market researcher you are?  Well I am developing a market researcher personality test to explore the character traits of different types of market researchers.

This is a link to a prototype version of the survey  and I would love for as many people as possible to take it to set some benchmark norms and give their feedback on what other question I could ask.

survey link

Once I have enough benchmark data I will build the norms into a feedback mechanic so you can see how you score v the rest of the industry...