blog.shrub

Freakonomics readers get a lesson in price discrimination (or bad customer service):

Interestingly, as I gave a lecture on “Price Discrimination”, using an example of the demand for textbooks (relatively inelastic) vs. novels (relatively elastic), the students pointed out that in our campus textbook store, “Freakonomics” is on sale at the regular price in the textbook section (1st floor) and at a 30% discount in the General Reading Section (2nd floor). Same college. Same store. Same hardback.

On your left, booker extraordinaire Natasha Bishop. On your right, Pollyanna Bush.

Heather and I spotted this on the way out of the hockey arena in Yerba Buena in San Francisco.

The CBC’s The National ran an exposé on Dr. Ranjit Kumar Chandra. It turns out he’s been faking his research data for 20 years:

Chandra claimed to have given 96 healthy seniors from St. John’s a daily multivitamin pill for a year. He then tested their memory for improvements. But the test results didn’t make sense.

“It turned out that the scores that his subjects were getting put them in the demented category,” Sternberg says. “The average score made them demented. Now, ah, so they would have been hospitalized or under some kind of care. But in fact, he claimed that none of them was demented. They were all normal functioning people.”

“Yeah, these people would have been too demented to understand what a study was, if you believed his numbers,” Roberts says.

Yet after just one year of taking his multivitamin, these same seniors went from demented to completely normal. Then there was Chandra’s claim that he had tested each vitamin in his multivitamin separately and at different strengths.

“It’s unbelievable. It’s just too much work. Gigantic, gigantic resources would be needed to do such a study,” Roberts says. “He’d have to have a gigantic grant just to do that study… Dozens of helpers and hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

The two professors found many more glaring errors in Chandra’s study.

Was there any possible explanation for the errors found in the study?

“Oh yes,” Roberts says. “There’s a very possible explanation. It’s that he made it up.”

Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal says:

“People who behave fraudulently tend to behave fraudulently in all aspects of their life,” Smith says. “And you see that, unfortunately, fairly commonly. And so my suspicion, not proven, is that you’ll find fraud in other aspects of his work.”

So one question remains: did he fake the data to get his PhD, too?

the san francisco bay guardian’s editor, tim redmond, has been drinking something funny lately, resulting in him ranting against craigslist:

The problem with that is simple: When Craig comes to town (and he’s coming to just about every town in the nation soon), the existing community institutions – say, the locally owned weekly newspaper – have a very hard time competing. In many ways, he’s like a Wal-Mart – yeah, landlords get cheaper real estate ads, and consumers find some bargains, but the money all goes out of town. And he puts nothing back into the community: He doesn’t, for example, hire reporters or serve as a community watchdog.

… because his paper is losing classified ad revenue. wah, wah, my business model is obsolete!

Anil Dash told him to jump off a cliff. Well, Anil was much nicer. And more eloquent.

Ssomeone called me last week and asked what do about his 16-month-old monitor that had just died. He had already shown it to a dealer, and the dealer told him there would be a $500 minimum charge.

Since monitors aren’t something you can easily troubleshoot or repair, i started think about ways to avoid paying the money.

1. If the product is just out of warranty, and it has previously been repaired, you may still be covered due to warranty tolling. the idea here is that for every day your product is in the shop being repaired, your warranty is extended by a day. As far as I can tell, warranty tolling exists in a few US states (California, Tennessee, Connecticut) and Mexico. The relevant sections of the California Civil Code are 1795.6 and 1795.7:
   

   1795.6. (a) Every warranty period relating to an implied or express warranty accompanying a sale or consignment for sale of consumer goods selling for fifty dollars ($50) or more shall automatically be tolled for the period from the date upon which the buyer either (1) delivers nonconforming goods to the manufacturer or seller for warranty repairs or service or (2), pursuant to subdivision (c) of Section 1793.2 or Section 1793.22, notifies the manufacturer or seller of the nonconformity of the goods up to, and including, the date upon which (1) the repaired or serviced goods are delivered to the buyer, (2) the buyer is notified the goods are repaired or serviced and are available for the buyer’s possession or (3) the buyer is notified that repairs or service is completed, if repairs or service is made at the buyer’s residence.

   (b) Notwithstanding the date or conditions set for the expiration of the warranty period, such warranty period shall not be deemed expired if either or both of the following situations occur: (1) after the buyer has satisfied the requirements of subdivision (a), the warranty repairs or service has not been performed due to delays caused by circumstances beyond the control of the buyer or (2) the warranty repairs or service performed upon the nonconforming goods did not remedy the nonconformity for which such repairs or service was performed and the buyer notified the manufacturer or seller of this failure within 60 days after the repairs or service was completed. When the warranty repairs or service has been performed so as to remedy the nonconformity, the warranty period shall expire in accordance with its terms, including any extension to the warranty period for warranty repairs or service.

   …

2. If you purchased the product on your credit card, you may be in luck. many credit card companies will double the warranty, up to an additional year. check with your credit card company; they may cover the cost of the repair.
3. Check with your insurance company. if you have homeowners or renter’s insurance, you may be covered. you may need a personal articles rider on your policy to cover this sort of thing. they’re cheap, however — mine costs $50/year and well worth it.

Thanks, Keith Olbermann — that was excellent.

Since January 2004, the US-VISIT program has apprehended nearly 1,000 people. Out of 44 million. At a cost of $15 billion.

That’s $15 million per bad guy caught.

at work, i posed the question “can vegetarians have cash cows?”

the answer:
since a cash cow is something that generates cash, and vegetarians are okay with consuming animal products (but not animals), vegetarians can indeed have cash cows.

vegans, on the other hand, cannot.