I, Cringely | Taguchi Me This: "You see advertising and marketing are usually considered to be more art than science. Sure, a fair amount of statistical analysis is used to be sure the person who is reading an ad, watching a commercial or hearing a message is from the target audience, but the message itself is largely a work of art. When marketing and advertising are taught in universities, much of what is taught is anecdotal -- what has seemed to work before. But it doesn't have to be that way, at least not according to James Kowalick and Mario Fantoni, two guys who say they can show you how to use science to design ads that cost less while being 10 or more times as effective as doing it the old way."
The Jodie Lane Project : New York, NY -- February 12, 2004.
The City Council Transportation Committee held a hearing today to investigate the causes of Jodie S. Lane’s tragic electrocution death on January 16th. The testimony revealed a startling lack of oversight on the part of the Public Services Commission, charged with overseeing Con Edison’s compliance with the National Electric Safety Code, last revised in 1913.
With only 5 inspectors at their disposal, the Public Services Commission relies entirely on Con Edison to report safety problems. Because Con Edison only reports incidents resulting in injury or death, the PSC was aware of only 15 shock incidents in the last 5 years. Con Edison has acknowledged that it actually received 539 reports of shock incidents in the same period, effectively admitting to misleading the PSC by an order of magnitude.
It is not only this discrepancy that is alarming, but also the fact that the Public Services Commission, charged with ensuring
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