I very much agree with your last post, and it is great advice to consider a quirky topic that will be really interesting to me rather than a big one than may be interesting, but has been done or will not be that convincing. Thinking about it as I read on, this is in part why Gladwell is so interesting to read. He focuses on a range of topics and issues ranging from things of critical importance, like the start of the American Revolution, but also some lighter topics from his personal life or his opening anecdote about hushpuppies. Popularity is a big issue throughout the book so far that may be interesting to explore (as you suggested). Focusing in on popularity is a good way to draw on both books ive been reading. Popularity lends itself to the type of macro trends Gladwell discusses, but leaves room for some interesting exploration of individual decision making which is discussed in Ariely's book. Some possible topics I have thought about this week are "why is Dr. Pepper so unpopular?" "why do Brookline students choose to apply to local schools in such great numbers?" "why do kids apply to so many more schools now than they used to?" I dont think I will want to write about the college process (im so sick of it at this point), but it could be interesting to explore and easy to get data from Naviance. It might be more fun to explore something more out there.
I just got back from a week long training trip to Texas with the crew team, but now that I'm back I have my own copy of Ariely's book so I will probably get more ideas from continuing that book.
I vote for the "more out there." No more college stuff!
ReplyDeleteYou clearly enjoy baseball stuff, so you might consider that. Have you read any of Bill James' stats books? In some ways, it seems to me that the work that he and others are doing with cybermetrics falls within the same realm as Gladwell's work: using statistics and very specific research to discover surprising things. I know that you're interested in other things, too, so there's a lot of ways you can go with this. Let yourself read around for another week (as we'll discuss in class on Tuesday) and then you'll see where you want to start digging in.
Assignment complete = 15/15