What were you thinking?: Do not manipulate those data

'It's not what you do . . .'.

This paper reports on the results of empirical research undertaken amongst clients of Government Office for the East of England (GO East) between November 1998 and June 1999. The theme of the research was to measure the level of satisfaction amongst clients of GO East, in order to generate, rather than validate, understanding. The research explored the experiences and opinions of institutions a...

Fun Boy Three Were Wrong: it is what you do, not the way that you do it

I decided to talk about modularity because many people — including myself — assert that spreadsheets (and other programs) should be modular. Fewer can state with precision what this means, or why it's good. It's like Dilbert's boss, as described by AI researcher Michael Covington's excellent presentation How to Write More Clearly, Think More Clearly, and Learn Complex Material More Easily [Covi...

What would you do if it were your kid?

Do you do what you say or do you do what you say others do?

We design a donations vs. own money choice experiment comparing three different treatments. In two of the treatments the pay-offs are hypothetical. In the first of these, a short cheap talk script was used, and subjects were required to state their own preferences in this scenario. In the second, subjects were asked to state how they believed an average student would respond to the choices. In ...

Spatial Data Quality: What do you mean?

Spatial data quality has been on the scientific agenda for a long time. Not at a priority spot, because it is a complex and not a sexy issue. However, we think that is going to change rapidly. The data explosion along with the open data policies is increasing data availability. There is finally a choice in what data to use, but how to make that choice? We see potential for spatial data quality ...