Update to Research Methods Book

I posted a minor update to my Research Methods book back in January.  The price is the same, $10, and for anyone that bought an ebook, just email me and I will send you the PDF of the update.  I think that I already sent all purchaserse of the old verison (before January 1, 2013) an email with a link for the new version.  If you didn't get the email, just let me know and I can send it out to you.

Purchase once, get free updates for the foreseeable future - kind of like a lot of my favorite software.

Sure would be nice if the textbooks I use for class could issue my students updates.  Oh well, that is the advantage of an ebook.

Here is a list of the table of contents (and the starting page)

1. Introduction  (1)
2. Advice for New Researchers    (2)
3. Literature Review Tools and Practices   (21)
4. Statistics Refresher   (32)
5. Survey Methods   (51)
6. Multivariate Statistical Analysis  (75)
7. Multidisciplinary Research Landscape  (92)
8. The Use and Misuse of Graphical Figures   (99)
9. Presenting Research   (106)
10. Documenting Research  (119)

Chapter 7 - Multidisciplinary Research Landscape was contributed by Dr. Ntokozo S Mthembu of Industrial Development Corporation of SA Ltd and Vale University of Technology and Dr. Michael O Kachieng’a of the University of Pretoria.

I still have material to improve in various places.  Feel free to give it a try though.  It is just $10 and a PDF that you can read on desktops, laptops, or tablets and I'll be giving free updates at least for the next few years.

Researching High Tech Recruiters using Honeypots

Elain Wherry posted a very interesting study that she conducted on javascript recruiters.  She is an executive in a small company and was needing to recruit more developers quickly.  She needed to answer questions such as "Is it best to use internal or external recruiters?" and "How important is Linked-In for recruiters?"

She created a fake persona and then watched as recruiters came a calling.  This is a less commonly used research design but showed how she could gain important managerial insights with minimal effort.

Elain doesn't mention that the idea of a "honeypot" is a classic tool in monitoring potential computer security threats - I like the elegance of using this as a research design for examining software developer recruiters using Linked-In and other tools.

Kickstarter Launches Now Provides Live Stats on Project Success

Kickstarter was talked about a lot in Spring's Emerging Technologies course.  While Sourceforge helped play a major role in open source software entrepreneurship, Kickstarter is covering a much wider range.  As an organizer of the PICMET conference, I was really impressed with the conference that they are funding using Kickstarter.  What a novel idea that all the all registrations are being done through Kickstarter.

While we talked about interesting  Kickstarter projects in the class, I really missed data that Sourceforge provides on projects, their activities, and success.

Fortunately, Kickstarter has just opened up a stats web page with a lot of this information.  The data is still at the aggregate level but this should prompt a lot of interesting new product development research over the next few years in the same way as Sourceforge has.

While Kickstarter is getting a lot of attention and publicity, I'm also very interested in what Quirky is doing.  If you haven't heard of them, Kickstarter projects are generally pretty mature - prototypes have been tested and now they are getting ready for full production.  In contrast, Quirky helps take ideas from the earliest, raw idea stage.  

Kickstarter, Quirky, and others are broadening the ability for everyone to get involved in New Product Development.  If you have a great idea, you can now do something about it.   Now there is opportunity to mine these sources for data to test ideas and I expect that we will be seeing research papers coming out using this data over the next few years.  

Michael Lewis: Don't Eat Fortune's Cookie

In this season of graduations, I ran across one speech that jumped out at me.

I recommended Michael Lewis' book, Moneyball, years before it came out as a movie.  Fundamentally, it is about a rational decision making transformed an industry stuck with metrics that were essentially unchanged for over 50 years through the lens of baseball.  A smaller, poorer company (team) could compete against the well-funded industry giants (actually Yankees rather than Giants...)

I really enjoyed reading his graduation speech at Princeton where he discussed how he made the transition from Princeton grad to best selling author.  The research and writing skills developed in his thesis were key to creating his later books.  You can read the speech or watch a youtube video.

Tennis racket mountain range chart

Blending a pet peeve of mine on the graphical display of figures with my favorite sport.

Tennis racket mountain range chart
FLOWINGDATA | JUNE 1, 2012
http://flowingdata.com/2012/06/01/tennis-racket-mountain-range/?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews


By Dan Piraro of Bizarro Comics.