Branding is Cool

Now and again, I’m prone to sending out some surveys via Facebook. I use Facebook because it’s an easy way to spread information quickly to a targeted group of people. It certainly helps me get people to take my surveys.

I like to put surveys together, because I genuinely just find them interesting. I like throwing a question out there and seeing how people respond. That is the first thing I like. The second is that I am able to take a question that I was interested in and interpret the data I gather.

I enjoy looking at the numbers and the results that occur from the questions I pose. Obviously, before every survey I give out, I always have a hypothesis of some kind. I suppose one of the motivators behind my surveys is to try and get a more comprehensive answer. Additionally, it also acts as a check on my own logic. Just because I believe something to be true doesn’t mean that the masses will agree with me. My surveys get to the bottom of this.

There is a minor drawback to the surveys I send out to my friends on Facebook; their agitation. I have great friends and I’m glad that they support me in my endeavors, however, when they receive a lot of survey requests via Facebook, they get a little annoyed. I feel poorly about this, but as I said earlier, Facebook is really helpful in spreading information quickly. People always have the option of declining participation in the survey. Unfortunately, this is the trend of the majority of people who I send my surveys out to, so I don’t always get the sample sizes I would like.

Anyway, my most recent poll that I have interpreted to date has been Those Answers Inc. Survey on Cool. Those Answers Inc. is the parent company through which MiParadox is its blogging subsidiary. The surveys that I run are always through Those Answers Inc. I encourage you to visit the website and see the types of activities it is involved in. Currently, they are running a survey on Fortune 500 Companies.

Well, I thought I’d finally disclose the results that I got regarding the survey on Cool.

• Results
  

The impetus behind this surveys was actually fueled by a friend of mine who is working for Axe Marketing this summer. That is a really sweet gig if you ask me. Axe has some of the best marketing for my demographic (18-35 males), and it’s cool that he is contributing to their ideas. Quite simply, he asked me what brands I thought were cool and why?

I figured it would be easy for me to list a couple of my favorite brands, and why in fact I enjoyed them, however, I felt like I would be doing him an injustice. So, in a sense, I went through this process to do a little market research for my buddy. It is probably way past due, but better late than never you know.

To clarify, the definition of cool was pulled from Wikipedia, and it states, “Cool is an aesthetic of attitude, behavior, comportment, appearance, style and Zeitgeist. Because of the varied and changing connotations of cool, as well its subjective nature, the word has no single meaning. It has associations of composure and self-control (cf. the OED definition) and often is used as an expression of admiration or approval.”

Respondents were asked how much they agree with the definition, and this group had an average score of 3.00, which represents the statement, “I agree.” So, when we think about what “cool” means for this survey, we have to look at it through the scope of the definition, and it is warranted that this group generally agrees with the statement given.

Here are the results of the Cool Brand portion of the Survey:

**Click the Image to see it more clearly**

There was a wide array of Brands that people could choose from; 13 options in all. If we break it down, Under Armor was considered the “coolest” brand. It received 7 of 26 votes, or 26.9% of the votes. Under Armor was followed by Nike with 6 of 26 votes, 23.1%, and in third place was Adidas with 19.2%.

Looking closer, the reasons people chose Under Armor to be the coolest brand can be summarized in four distinct points:

• Personal Use
• Growth of Company
• Image
• Originality/Pioneers of the Industry

People cited Image most frequently in choosing Under Armor as the coolest brand. This points heavily towards the influence of marketing. Marketing agencies work hard to develop an image for their product so that people will like it and hopefully think it is cool.

This information runs counter to some other results from the survey. The respondents were also asked in the survey, “who determines cool?” The respondents could pick one of five choices: television, magazines, radio, friends, and family. Overwhelmingly, the respondents replied that friends were most important in determining cool; over 69% of all respondents agreed with this.

However, in describing why the brand they chose was cool, no respondents made a reference to their friends, and only 2 respondents alluded to the fact that the people around them wore that particular brand.

This raises an interesting argument about who actually defines cool. Although people may think that their friends are what determines cool, perhaps they need to look at who or what determines cool for their friends.

In this exercise it appears as though the power of advertising and marketing really outshine the impact of one’s confidants. It is important to be aware of the significant role that advertising plays in our lives.

We are surrounded by it almost constantly; while driving on the street, while watching TV, or even reading a magazine. Marketing agencies are hard at work dreaming up ways to catch your attention for a millisecond, infiltrate your mind with images and concepts that are intended to reorganize how you think and feel about a particular object so that you will use your money to buy their product.

Mitt Romney explains this concept of advertising very succinctly in his book, Turnaround: Crisis, Leadership, and the Olympic Games, when he says, “Branding has become a big buzzword these days. The idea is straightforward: I think back to the time when I couldn’t care whether I got a Coke, Pepsi, or an RC Cola. They were all the same to me: sweet delicious, and, because my Mom frowned on caffeine drinks, rare. At the soda machine, I would have selected whichever was closer to my pointer finger.

Over the years, I began to associate Coke with all sorts of things I like: smiling young people, sports, music, the Olympics, and recently, polar bears. Those associations make me ‘feel good’ about Coke, a lot better than I do about RC Cola (are you still out there RC?). So when I pick up a twelve-pack at the grocery store or step up to a soft drink machine, I’ll push the Coke button even if it costs a little more.”

The same holds true with most any product; associate it with enough goodness, and you’ll hook the average person in every time.

• Auxiliary Results

Within my study on cool brands, I also asked about other things that are cool, but didn’t really have an idea as to the outcome. I just did it to fill a little space and seek some more information out that I could look at.

I asked respondents to answer the coolest in the following categories: Sports, Business, Politics, Music, and Late Night Television. Along with these, I also asked for reasoning why, but confined their choices to the following factors: persistence, creativity, luck, aggression, faith, planning, humor, style, and advertising.

• Sports

The Coolest Athlete was determined to be Tiger Woods. He received 52% of the votes. Second was Tom Brady with 24% and third was Kobe Bryant with 16%. I have to take in minor responder bias here as Tiger Woods was going on a rampage during the survey, ultimately winning the US Open Golf Tournament in dramatic fashion.

The reason for being cool is most attributed to Style for athletes, gaining 56% of the votes. Advertising was attributed 16% of the time.

• Business

The coolest businessman was won by an absolute landslide. Eric Schmidt of Google Inc. collected 81% of the votes. I find this quite astonishing, as most people don’t even associate him with Google automatically. This honor typically goes to Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The rest of the field was completely insignificant aside from Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, who got 8% of the votes. This really tells you a lot about how people define a cool business. Those that are tech based and innovative, as Google and Microsoft are, win the day.

This is further warranted by the reasoning of the respondents. 53% attributed their choice to creativity and 21% based their decision on style. I guess that’s what it takes to run a thriving company these days.

• Politics

As far as the coolest politician, this was probably the tightest field. A friend of mine actually came up to me the day after I opened up the survey and said that none of the politicians were cool, which I found quite amusing. Anyway, the coolest politician happens to be Sarkozy of France. He just narrowly beat out Bush, who was just a single vote ahead of Robert Mugabe, the dictator of Zimbabwe who has come under a lot of fire recently. I don’t know if I’d call Mugabe’s current actions cool necessarily.

**Click the Image to see it more clearly**

To be a cool politician, you must have Style and Planning, the two highest voted categories for politics.

• Music

The music industry continues to be run by Jay-Z. He received the most amount of votes, narrowly beating out Kanye West and the Beatles.

Similar to being a good businessman, you have to have both style and creativity to be cool in the music industry. This reminds me of quote by Jay-Z himself, “I’m not a businessman, I’m a business…man.”

• Late Night Television
  

Jon Stewart and Conan O’Brien tied to take this category. I would agree with the results of this survey. They are both really edgy and fun to watch. Not surprisingly, the most important factor to be a cool late night television host comes down to humor. Be funnier than the next guy and you got the job it appears.

Finally, I asked what the coolest country was. The USA won this portion of the survey, but I’m going to cite this as responder bias, as most people were probably from America who took the survey. Australia came second, Denmark third, and Brazil fourth. Not a bad bunch of countries if you ask me. I have personally been to Denmark and it rocks!

• Conclusion

Anyway, here was a little insight into what people think is cool these days and why they think that. The auxiliary results are fun to look at, but the meaning behind this survey is really contained within the brand results.

People generally regarded the “image” of a brand as the most important concept in thinking it is cool. This, however, conflicts with how people think they interpret cool; via their friends.

This sheds enormous light on the powerful impacts of marketing and advertising, and how it can distort and manipulate views to elicit a certain response. Remember to always be critical and think about the stimuli within your environment. It shapes you.

The Greatest Idea That Never Was

This idea struck me as if it was a no-brainer. I've been running around the world recently, hopping on and off planes, trains, and the occasional automobile. I saw some incredible things along the way and I truly hope that you all consider traveling for an extended time.

Anyway, in the final leg of my travels I had to deal with the burden of overweight luggage as I was coming back to America. I was based in Europe and there are lots of discount airlines (SkyEurope, EasyJet, RyanAir, etc.) that you can book tickets for under $100 easily. Unfortunately, these airlines, while being extremely cheap to book your tickets, have stringent and terrible rules when it comes to overweight luggage.

EasyJet and SkyEurope have a policy of a maximum of 20 kilograms (44 pounds) per passenger. Now this is a great deal of allotted weight if you're traveling for a weekend or similar time frame. However, if you're traveling anywhere for an extended period with more than a couple days worth of items, then this allotment quickly becomes a lot smaller.

Additionally, the amount that they charge you for every kilogram (2.2 pounds) that you're over is disgusting. In Prague, I had to pay 240 Krowns for every kilogram I was over. That's roughly $15 per kilogram. Therefore, you can get yourself into a lot of trouble quickly if you go far over the limit. That $70 ticket that they initially charged you doesn't look as reasonable anymore.

The idea that hit me square in the face after going through a number of calamities involving my own overweight luggage was to have a piece of luggage that can essentially weigh itself. If you could develop a way for a piece of luggage to have an internal weighing mechanism, then you could do away with the stress that goes into weighing luggage at the airport and being stunned by the amount they charge you.

I was ecstatic when I thought of this idea. It seemed simple, necessary, and had enormous potential for revenue.

• Sizing the Market (US)
  

To give an idea of how much money this could generate, I want to get into some numbers and figures that will tell the story better than I could ever. Throughout this process, I will only be discussing the American market.

According to FlightAware.com, a superb and excellent website that tracks flights in real-time by airport, airliner, or model of plane, there are typically approximately 40,000 flight arrivals in a 24 hour period.

Further, according to the book Air Transportation by Robert M. Kane, in the year 2000 there were approximately 139.9 seats on an average jet airliner.

Therefore, we can figure out, at full capacity, how many people use air travel in a year. So, if we multiply the 40,000 arrivals a day by the average number of seats a jet airliner has, 139.9, we conclude that the maximum capacity of air travel in the US is 5,596,000 people a day. If we go one step further, we find that in a year there is the capacity for 2,042,540,000 people to travel.

However, planes are rarely at full capacity. Further harking on Kane's book, Air Transportation, he reveals that airplanes typically hold 63% of their maximum capacity. Therefore, if we use this statistic in conjunction with the maximum capacity of air travelers a year found previously, we can conclude the amount of seats filled each year.

• 0.63(2,042,540,000 people) = 1,286,800,200 seats filled

That's a ton of seats each year being filled in and out of the US. We have to continue going one step further, though. This number doesn't take into account that people may fly more than once in a year. There a tons of people that have to fly more than once for their jobs or for personal pleasure. Therefore, I would assume that the average amount of flights a person has in a year is 12.

• 1,286,800,200/12 = 107,233,350 people a year flying

Next, we have to figure out how many of these people are going to be checking luggage. Whenever I go to the airport, I see a lot of people who just have carry-on items that don't necessarily have to check any of their luggage, but then again, I also see a ton of people who do. I would say that the proportion of people checking versus those not is still larger. I would say that its around 60% on average. Therefore, to figure out how many items are checked each year, we multiply this proportion to the amount of people flying each year.

• 0.60(107,233,350) = 64,340,010 items of luggage checked a year

However, when people check luggage, sometimes they check more than one piece. However, I would say for the most part people typically check one piece of luggage per person flying, yet, in certain instances it could be two or even three pieces. Therefore, I would assume that 1.3 pieces of luggage are checked per person. This gives us a new total for the market of checked luggage each year.

• 1.3(64,340,010) = 83,642,013 items of luggage checked a year

Now that we finally got to the bottom of how many pieces of luggage are checked a year, we can figure out how much money we can make on our self-weighing bag.

If we make the most conservative estimate of the market, capturing 1%, we can sell a total of 836,421 bags a year. After looking around at some prices of luggage on various websites that sell luggage, I figured that we could sell our self-weighing luggage with all its wondrous features for a very competitive price of $150.00. If we sold our luggage for this amount, we would have a revenue stream of $125,463,020.00 per year.

That isn't half bad for capturing just 1% of the baggage market. And, I assume that in years to come, this market share will only grow as the airlines become more stringent about their weight policies and people become more conscious about the amount of weight they can bring on an airline.

So, there I was. Sitting at a lunch table with my uncle mesmerized by the fact that in a few short years I'd be a billionaire. I went home that evening and started researching how scales work and how you could put one inside a bag.

I found out that digital scales work via load-cell technology that uses properties of electromagnetism. Essentially, by bending a piece of metal, an electrical output is created that can be measured. It was frightfully easy as to how to create this self-weighing bag. I thought I was good as gold. I was about to email a patent lawyer that I knew to start what was going to be my journey to a billion.

However, just before I did that, I looked up some costs associated with filing a patent. What I found was quite daunting. Here are some figures courtesy of IpWatchdog.com:

• Filing fee for individual inventor: $150
• Search fee by Patent Office: $250
• Examination fee: $100
• Issue fee: $700
• Patent drawings: $125 each
• Attorney fees: $252/hour (Based on 2001 economic data - National Average)
• Patent Search by attorney: $300-$600
• Patentability opinion: $1,200

With all of these fees, it appears as though the cheapest road to filing a patent for my invention was going to be around $4,000 to $6,000. This is the absolute cheapest method. However, patents can sometimes cost in excess of $25,000.

But, I figured what's $6,000 when I could potentially be making over $100 million. Anyway, just before I sent the email off to my patent lawyer friend, I decided to do a patent search of my own, which is highly recommended before undergoing the process of patenting. You can do this easily through Google Patents or the US Patent Office directly.

To my shock and dismay, I came across several patents that have been processed within the past two years that articulated my idea better than I even could. You can see them by clicking these links: 1, 2, 3. Doh! I felt like an idiot. I couldn't believe that someone had come up with this idea, and even beyond that, years before I did.

I slouched back in my chair, came back down to reality, and had no choice but to continue thinking up new ideas.

• Conclusion

Ideas are valuable commodities. As we have just seen, a simple idea to add a weighing instrument to a bag has the potential to generate $125,463,020.00 a year. Therefore, as an inventor, it is very important to familiarize yourself with the rules and regulations as they relate to patents.

Understanding how patents work and how to formulate them well is extremely beneficial. As I said earlier, I wouldn't be daunted by the initial payments necessary. If you believe in your idea and you do enough research about it and the market it functions in, then it should pay enormous dividends.

Additionally, if something like this has ever happened to you before, don't become discouraged. It is all part of the process. Persevere and tackle these obstacles as learning situations in which you can improve upon for next time.

Hypothetical Cereal Lineup

The other night I was hanging out with some of my friends from back home in America. It had been a real long time since I had seen any of them, because I have just come back from a four month excursion in Europe. I found out quickly just how easy it is to forget about small things. For instance, the dialog in America versus somewhere in Europe is going to be significantly different. I feel that the reason for this is quite simple. It's all just based on what's current and closest to you.

In France they discussed the French Open, because it was going on while I was there, and it was in France. In Italy they discussed football, because Italy happens to be the Fifa 2006 Champs, and who doesn't enjoy gloating for four years. In Denmark, everyone was just really happy, and enjoyed life because Denmark is the happiest place in the world. This is no joke either, according to BBC News Denmark is in fact the happiest place in the world.

Anyway, the things that social groups banter about is a function of space and time. That is what made me pay close attention to this pretty meaningless discussion that I overheard some buddies of mine having.

My American friends were arguing about the prospects of having a baseball lineup made up completely of cereals. It is quite amusing when you think about it. You have Snap leading off, followed by Tony The Tiger, and of course, Lucky the Leprechaun from Lucky Charms batting cleanup. There are hundreds of cereals to choose from. It's quite amazing how much choice there is in deciding upon cereal.

I thought the idea was quite a laugh. The thing that caught my ear when overhearing this was the fact that baseball was being discussed, and they certainly didn't talk about that in Europe (at least not the people I met).

When I saw my friends around me getting completely engrossed with the concept of a cereal baseball lineup, I asked myself, if my friends find this worthwhile enough to think about, discuss, argue, then surely lots of people would like to think about the same kind of topic.

The problem is, I haven't really nailed down how to get a particular type of product or idea out to people that relate to a cereal baseball lineup. I was thinking that maybe it would be fun to play this as a fantasy game or something, but I'm unsure how you would give points. Then I was thinking that maybe this is an idea that Kellogg's or General Mills would like to have as a promotion on the back of their cereal boxes or as an insert inside of their cereals. But I'm not sure if that really utilizes the idea as best as possible.

If anything, I'd like to hear your ideas as to the practical nature of this concept.

But why even consider the concept unless there is a sizable demographic who would enjoy this sort of debate? Well, after some research, I found out that there are actually a lot of people who would enjoy discussing this.

However, after talking with one of my other friends, he made the comment that the only people who would enjoy debating this issue of a baseball cereal lineup are those who are "high." Whether he was joking or not, I agree with his statement. This is somewhat of a ridiculous conversation to have, so when I found the demographic, I worked those numbers in as well.

• Demographics for Marijuana Smoking, Baseball Liking, Cereal Eating, Debaters

Well, I figure the first place to start is with baseball. The way I determined how many people like baseball is by assuming that those people who attend baseball games in fact enjoy the game. I don't think this is too much of an assumption and anyway a spectator is called a "fan" anyway. According to WikiAnswers, there were 75,959,167 people who attended baseball games in 2006.

This number describes total attendance though, which therefore includes people who have season tickets or attend more than one baseball game in the season. I'll make quite a liberal estimation that 20% of people who attend a baseball game end up attending a second game. So, if we take 80% of 75,959,167 we arrive at the total number of people who enjoy baseball. That equals 60,767,334 people.

Alright great. Next, I need to determine what portion of these people are likely to smoke marijuana. According to US Department of Health and Human Services, 97 million Americans, "admit to having tried [marijuana]." Furthermore, according to the CIA, the estimated population of America in 2007 was 301,139,947. Thus, by taking these two figures, we can make a simple proportion that will describe the percentage of Americans who smoke marijuana, overall. So, 97 million divided by 301,139,947 is equal to 32.2%. I was quite surprised to see how high this percentage actually was.

So, if we assume that our sample of baseball fans are generally similar to the entire US population, we can take 32.2% of the total fans to essentially find out how many baseball fans smoke marijuana. This equation looks like this: 0.322(60,767,334). This function equals 19,573,728 baseball fans that smoke marijuana.

The final step is to determine how many people enjoy eating cereal for breakfast and finally apply this proportion to our prior total to arrive at marijuana smoking, baseball loving, cereal eaters.

According to a survey taken by ABC News on breakfast meals, they were able to determine that 35% of women and 27% of men eat cereal for breakfast. I would think that if these people are eating cereal for breakfast, they must enjoy doing it.

In order to figure out this total, we have to first divide our total baseball fans that smoke marijuana by two (2). This is because we assume that there is an equal amount of men and women in the sample. This means that we have two groups of 9,786,864 baseball fans that smoke marijuana, one male and one female.

If we assume that our cereal eating survey is generally representative of America, we apply the percentages to the two groups to arrive at our final conclusions.

• 0.35(9,786,864 females) = 3,425,402 cereal eating females that like baseball and smoke marijuana
• 0.27(9,786,864 males) = 2,642,453 cereal eating males that like baseball and smoke marijuana

This gives us a grand total of 6,067,855 cereal eaters that like baseball and smoke marijuana.

• Conclusion

Based on these findings, the potential demographic for a product that utilizes baseball and cereal in this particular context (one conducive to a person who smokes marijuana), is approximately 6 million people.

That's a significant total when you consider how random these three cross sections of America are. After performing these calculations, it further motivates me to find the next great idea, because, apparently, no matter what it is...there's a market for it.

Raise! Conservatives and Liberals

I enjoy collecting, organizing, and interpreting data on a variety of issues. One of the best ways to find out information is to simply ask people. The way that I have found most success with this is through surveys. Surveys are quick and easy tools to find out relevant information from a variety of people in a very short time. Either way, I recently ran a survey on what I consider to be quite an original concept.

The thought occurred to me while I was taking a train back from Budapest to Prague sometime in May. I was playing the fun game of "Asshole" with a couple buddies of mine, and for some reason or another, I pondered whether or not there was any correlation between political ideology and the personal habits of a player playing poker.

I guess, at first glance, this may seem like a silly correlation to even explore. However, think about the extent to which one's political ideology impacts a person's actions and thoughts. People's political ideologies can represent a great deal about their ideas on faith, the economy, abortion, gun control, free speech, etc. These are all extremely lofty ideals, and one's political ideology can dictate a lot about them, so why couldn't political ideology also depict something about how a person plays poker?

I wanted to find out just that. So I ran a survey and I want to explain my results here.

• Poker Survey

My poker survey was made up of two distinct portions. The first portion was collecting information on individuals political ideologies on a scale of very conservative (1) to very liberal (5). There were other questions that I threw in the collecting information stage to throw off the true intent of the survey, like what people's favorite fast food was and what their eye color is. I will also reveal these results.

After I collected this information, I wanted to gather information on poker playing habits, and the general consensus of particular moves that can be made in poker as they relate to betting. I provided the people who took the survey with 10 separate scenarios in which they had to judge how "aggressive" the move was. I defined aggressive as, "making bold moves and attempting to push players around in order to maximize favorable outcomes."

This definition of "aggressiveness" stemmed out of my hypothesis that liberals would be more aggressive in playing poker than conservatives. I was drawn to this conclusion after researching and reading about some of the characteristics of liberal ideology that you can read further about here.

Anyway, the intent of the first survey was to collect information on the average aggressiveness of the 10 poker scenarios that I provided. I wanted to get a collective idea of how aggressive people would consider the particular move, on average. I made people rank each move between least aggressive (1) and most aggressive (5).

**Click the Image to see it more clearly**

On average, the 34 respondents believed that Scenario 10 was the most aggressive, with an average score of 3.82/5. Scenario 10 was, "You are holding Queen, 5. The board shows 5, Queen, Ace after the flop. Another player bets 50. You call. The turn shows a King. Another player bets 75. You call. The river shows an Ace. The other player checks to you. You bet 100."

On average, the least aggressive move was Scenario 4 with an average score of 2.03/5, "After the turn, you have picked up a straight. After the flop someone bet 30, and you called hoping to pick up your straight. You did. You are first to move. You bet 30."

At this point, I was very satisfied with my findings thus far. In gathering my information, I also wanted to gauge how familiar my respondents were with the game of poker, and this group was particularly well educated with an average familiarity of 4.24/5 and a mode (most frequent response) of 5/5. Therefore, I felt pretty confident that when I asked these scenarios, the respondents knew what I was talking about.

Some of the unnecessary information gathering related to eye color of the respondent and their favorite fast food. Respondents had the choice of green (1), blue (2), brown (3), hazel (4), and other (5) as potential eye colors. This particular group had an equal amount of brown eyed people as hazel eyed people (12 each). The rest were made up of 7 blue and 3 green.

Fast food was another component that I wanted to learn more about, for no particular reason really. The group was given the choice of the following: 1=Burger King, 2=McDonalds, 3=Taco Bell, 4=Wendy's, 5=Subway. Based on my findings, 14 went with Subway, 6 went with Wendy's, 5 went with Taco Bell, 6 with McDonalds, and only 3 with Burger King. Healthy group we got here.

The most critical information that I need to gather was political ideology. Remember, this was ranked on a 1 to 5 scale, 1 being very conservative and 5 being very liberal. This group of 34 respondents had an average political ideology of 3.5/5, indicating a slightly liberal collective standing. This is verified by the mode of 4/5, which identified the individual as liberal. 2 individuals identified themselves as very liberal, 17 identified as liberal, 11 as moderate, and 4 as conservative.

Now that I had gotten a collective average for each scenario, I needed to then go back and survey individuals on what they would do in particular. The way that I presented this, was to ask them if they were presented with the scenario, how many times out of 10 would they agree with the move. This allowed for individual variation, and even if a particular scenario received an overwhelmingly high score in its aggressiveness, an individual could diminish this score with their own personal habits.

So, by taking the respondents answer in the second part of the survey as a fraction, ie, 7/10 would be equivalent to agreeing with a particular move 7 times, and multiplying this fraction by the average aggressiveness scores for each scenario from the first survey, and then finally averaging the individual's scores together, I would arrive at a personal aggressiveness score for the individual.

For instance, consider 3.82 (the aggressiveness for Scenario 10 provided above). An individual may agree with Scenario 10, 6 out of 10 times, which means that the following equation would result: (6/10)(3.82) = 2.292. Therefore, for this particular individual the actual aggressiveness of Scenario 10 would contribute to their overall score as 2.292. This would be done 9 other times to account for all the scenarios and then averaged.

I have graphed these results in the following chart:

**Click the Image to see it more clearly**

• Conclusion

The purpose of this experiment was to determine if there was a correlation between political ideology and aggressiveness in playing poker. My hypothesis was that liberals would be more aggressive when playing poker than their conservative counterparts. Based on my findings, the opposite appears to be more likely. The highest aggressiveness score was achieved by a conservative and slowly decreased the more liberal an individual was.

This is an interesting result, however, I would urge further analysis on this topic. The R-Squared value (a statistic that will give some information about the goodness of fit of a model), is a dismal 0.0888, which indicates that the data found is not the best fit for this model.

In the future, a larger pool of respondents in the second part of the survey would make it more accurate. Otherwise, if you're sitting down at a table ready to play some poker with a group of conservatives, play defense.

Louvre Thought Exercise

At the moment I find myself in Paris as my journey across Europe comes to a close. Paris is one of the biggest, most exciting, and beautiful cities I have ever had the chance to be in. It is truly spectacular how it is capable of maintaining its beauty, but at the same time, pump like big cities do. In some ways it reminds me of New York, just far more beautiful, historic, and everything happens to be in French.

Anyway, while I've been here I've had the opportunity to visit some of the most amazing museums in the entire world. I have seen the Museum D'Orsay which houses a humongous collection of Monet, Manet, Van Gogh, Whistler, Degas, and Renior. I loved this museum very much and if you're in Paris you cannot miss it. And of course, if you're in Paris and you're checking out some museums, it is an absolute must to go and visit the most famous and most visited museum in the entire world, the Musée du Louvre.

The Louvre houses the most famous piece of art in all the world, The Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci. It also has the famous, Venus de Milo, which is supposedly a sculpture of the Greek Goddess Aphrodite that was found in 1820 by a peasant on the Aegean islands of Milos. Beyond these two astronomically famous works of art, there is just hoards and hoards of art that fill this museum. It would probably take three very long lifetimes to be able to really see all the Louvre has to offer.

Although I was absolutely blown away and impressed with the artwork and sculptures in the Louvre, I was equally impressed with the actual structure of the museum. The inside was as beautiful as any palace I have ever seen, and its immense size is almost unfathomable. I spent a good three hours there and don't think I left the single wing I entered into. It is truly enormous. At the same time though, it is so beautiful and ornate.

This got me thinking what all of this must have cost the French Government. I learned a lot about the process of making the Louvre and how it arrived at its present state, and wanted to figure out how long it will take for the Louvre to break even (if ever).

• Louvre Thought Exercise

According to the 9th Edition of Frommer's Europe Guidebook, the Louvre recently undertook a renovation known as The Grand Louvre Project that cost an astronomical $1.2 Billion and took 15 years to complete. The book goes on to further cite that there are individual galleries that are constantly being renovated, but that is to be expected. So, to clarify, in this thought experiment, our total cost of the Louvre is $1.2 Billion (the other galleries can be considered in another though experiment at some other time perhaps).

That's a pretty good chunk of change to use on a building. I wanted to learn further about The Grand Louvre Project, because perhaps that would give me insight as to how it was going to be paid for or when they expected to make a profit on the Museum.

According to the Harvard Design School Center for Design Informatics Executive Summary on the Grand Louvre, The Grand Louvre Project was just one of several renovations and projects that were proposed by prior French president François Mitterrand. Other projects that were underway during his presidency were the new Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Opéra des
Bastille, and the Grande Arche de la Défense (collectively known as the “Grands Travaux” or Grand Projects). I have personally had the opportunity to see the National Library and Grande Arche, in addition to the Louvre, and they are spectacular sites to see in Paris as well.

The operation to renovate and construct new additions to the Louvre began in 1981 in which the design phase first started. The chief architect chosen to direct the project was I. M. Pei (the glass pyramid that serves as the entrance to the Louvre is named for him today).

The project was split into two phases. The first phase was renovation of 61,990 square meters. This part of the project also included demolishing 55,000 square meters. Phase two was the addition of 50,000 square meters of usable gallery space. Between 1981 and 1998 these two phases were realized. What a serious undertaking.

Now that we have a thorough understanding of the project, let's see if the money I spent to get in the door this past Friday went to the Louvre or into the pockets of the Director and Curator of the Museum.

• Vital Information

1. It cost 9 Euro to enter the museum
2. It costs 6 Euro to enter the museum between 6pm and 10pm on Wednesdays and Fridays
3. The Museum is open 6 days a week, and is closed on January 1st, May 1st, November 11 and December 25, 2008
4. The hours of operation are from 9am to 6pm regularly
5. The first Sunday of every month is free for visitors
6. Children 17 and under are free
7. Guided tours are 6 Euro a person, but free for children under 12
8. Audioguides are 5 Euro

Okay, here we go:

According to an article published by Bloomberg.com, the Louvre is the world's number one visited museum in the world with 8.3 million visitors annually. First, I want to break down these 8.3 million people by age.

**Click the Image to see it more clearly**
By looking at figures provided by the US Census Bureau for the World Population, I can extrapolate roughly what the demographics of these 8.3 million people would be. Obviously it cannot be perfectly accurate, because you would have to take into account an individual's preference to view art, whether or not they had enough time while in Paris, etc. However, this will give us a very good representation of how these 8.3 million people are composed. These numbers are also represented graphically in the following chart.

So now that we have a sufficient break down of the people entering the Louvre we can figure out who is next paying for what. We will figure this out on a yearly basis, and then we will move forward from the year 1998 to the present to see when or if they have broken even regarding the initial $1.2 Billion investment.

Now, let us find out how many days the Louvre is open. If there are 52 weeks in a year and the Louvre is open 6 days a week, then that totals 312 days. However, it isn't open for four of those days, so that now means it is only open for 308 days out of the year. We're doing great.

**Click the Image to see it more clearly**

Now, if we assume that the same amount of people enter into the Louvre each day on average, we arrive at the conclusion that there is 8.3 million people over 308 days this equals, 26,948 visitors per day that the Louvre is open. Obviously some days will be busier than others, but this is purely on average.

For simplicity sake it will be better to find the average length of a day.

If we know that 4 out of 6 days are going to have 9 hours, and 2 out of 6 days are going to have 13 hours we simply perform the following equation: 4/6(9 hours) + 2/6(13 hours) = 10.333 hours.

Therefore, on a given day at the Louvre, it will be open for 10.333 hours or 10 hours and 20 minutes on average. It is also important to find out the average payment made by a person entering the Louvre, due to the fact that in addition to hours of operation changing, price also changes.

It will be best if we do this average on an hourly scale. In a week, there are five full days in which full price is paid, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. This equates to 45 hours of full payment. On Wednesday and Friday, there are an additional 4 hours each in which the price of entry is reduced. Sunday is a little more complicated.

Remember, the first Sunday of every month is free, so 12 out of 52 Sundays in a year are free, but the others are not. Tuesday is not considered because the Louvre is closed then.

So, we arrive at the following equation for average price paid: (45(9 Euro) + 8(6 Euro) + (40/52)(9 hours)(9 Euro))/59.92 hours = 8.60 Euro. The 59.92 hours is the average length of time the Louvre is open a week, not including the holiday closings. It is divided out to give an average hourly entrance rate.

We can also find out how many people enter the Louvre per hour. By taking 26,948 and dividing it by 10.333 hours, we arrive at an hourly rate of 2,608 people per hour.

Next we need to figure out how many people are aged under 12 and under 17 years of age, due to fees associated with entrance and tours. To do this, we will assume that there is an equal number of people in each age year within each age category. Therefore, there are the same amount of people within the age category 0-19 who are 2 years old as there are 18 year olds.

If we know that there are 2,996,383 people in the 0-19 category, all we do is divide this category by 20 to get an equal rate of people for each year. Therefore, there are 149,819 people in each year. To figure out how many are 12 and under, we multiply this number by 13 (remembering that 0 is included in the count), and the same is done for 17, except this number is then multiplied by 18.

This gives us 1,947,648 people 12 years and under, or 6,324 per day and 2,696,745 people 17 years and under, or 8,755 per day.

• Recap
• Louvre is open 308 Days a year
• 26,948 people visit per day
• An average day's length is 10.333 hours or 10 hours and 20 minutes
• On average, it cost 8.60 Euro to enter the Louvre
  
• 2,608 people visit per hour
• There are 6,324 people 12 years and under per day
• There are 8,755 people 17 years and under per day
  

Now we can start figuring information out. Based on the information we have compiled, it would be best to figure out our estimates on a daily basis.

• Money made on entrance fee to the Louvre per day: (26,948-8,755) x 8.60 = 156,459.80 Euro
• Assuming 35% of people go on guided tours, Money made on guided tours at the Louvre per day: 0.35(26,948-6,324) x 6 = 43,310.40 Euro
• Assuming 35% of people use Audioguides, Money made on Audioguides at the Louvre per day: 0.35(26,948) x 5 = 47,159 Euro
  

Therefore, the Louvre makes 156,459.80 + 43,310.40 + 47,159 = 246,929.20 Euro per day.

Over a year of open days numbering 308, the Louvre will expect to make: 308(246,929.20 Euro) = 76,054,193.60 Euro per year.

There have been 10.5 years since completion of the Grand Louvre Project in 1998. Therefore, based on this information the Louvre has brought in: 10.5(76,054,193.60 Euro) = 798,569,032.80 Euro.

Recall that the amount it took to perform the project was in Dollars. Therefore, all of my figures that are in Euros need to be converted to Dollars. 1 Euro will buy you 1.5756 Dollars as of June 8th, 2008.

With this in mind, I constructed a chart that would show when the Louvre would "break even." According to my findings, the Louvre would have surpassed the $1.2 Billion initial expense at the beginning of 2007.

**Click the Image to see it more clearly**

• Conclusion

The Grand Louvre Project was a huge undertaking for the city of Paris. It was a 17 year endeavor that cost over $1.2 Billion. Since the projects completion in 1998, the Louvre has brought in 76,054,193.60 Euro ($119,830,987.40) per year, based on our gathered information. This means that the Louvre covered its initial operating expense early in the year 2007.

The Louvre is an incredible project and well worth the money and time that was put into it. Walking through it was an incredible experience. If you make your way to Paris, this is one stop you're most definitely going to want to make.

Housing Foreclosures

There's an old maxim that I believe generally rings true, and that is, "buy low and sell high." It makes sense, and to be honest, sounds very easy to do. However, that isn't always the case. Understanding markets is an unbelievably challenging thing to do. Just ask most of the Institutional investors on Wall Street. I'm not naming any names, but one company in particular has had their stock plummet from over $100 to just about $2 in the span of weeks resulting from the recent calamity known as the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

To put it another way, the market is currently in the midst of repricing risk. What this means to me is that there is a lot more uncertainty than there used to be. What is the value of your home or investment property in the wake of the sub-prime lending debacle? What is the value of a barrel of oil or an ounce of gold as investors search for alternative opportunities? People and institutions that were supposed to know these answers just don't know anymore, and that makes everyone's financial life miserable.

But it doesn't have to be. Uncertainty can be a beautiful thing if you are willing and able to manage that uncertain risk properly. There is a goldmine out there that is just waiting for people to pounce on it, but it takes guts, and it won't just fall in your lap.

The opportunity that I'm alluding to is the current housing market and foreclosures in particular. According to InvestWords.com, a foreclosure is, "The legal process by which an owner's right to a property is terminated, usually due to default. Typically involves a forced sale of the property at public auction, with the proceeds being applied to the mortgage debt." Wow, thats an awful lot of jargon for one sentence. Let's break it down so that we understand what's going on here.

A legal process: I suppose that means that there is some law that governs the property of sale. Now, there are a tons of laws, and I'd probably have to go and study for the Bar before I could give you a proper understanding. However, I suppose that foreclosures involve legal matters. Got it.

Right to property terminated: This sucks if you're the one being foreclosed on. This pretty much means that you don't have the right to own this home anymore.

Usually due to default: This means that the owner was unable to make required debt payments, most likely in the form of a mortgage. This then means that authorities have to step in and take your home away.

Forced sale of the property [...] proceeds applied to public mortgage: This is the sweet part of the deal. This means that the bank, who technically owns the home (they are being repaid by the owners), wants to offload their debt (risk) for the house to another entity. This is the part of the process where you can make some serious cash, real fast.

So now that we understand exactly what foreclosure is, how can we capitalize on it to make a huge killing so that we can buy our Porsche, Ferrari, or Playstation 3? The process isn't all that complex, but it requires a lot of "dotting of I's and crossing of T's." You have to have enormous attention to detail and be quite bold in your actions. As I started out by saying, this is an uncertain time in which risk is hard to measure. However, there is opportunity out there, so don't just watch others, get out there with them and enjoy the fruits of capitalism.

• Process

When I discuss the purchase and sale of foreclosed homes, I will do so generally. Of course there are a lot more details to it than I could ever possibly express here, but ultimately I see it as a three step process.

1. Find Location
2. Price and Purchase
3. Renovate and Sell

I'm going to discuss these three aspects generally.

• Find Location

All over America, people are being struck by the sub-prime mortgage crisis and this is leading to extensive numbers of foreclosed homes. According to Forbes Magazine, in 2007 there were 79% more foreclosures than there were in 2006, and in the same article they cite Congress's Joint Economic Committee who have projected that 2 million Americans will lose their homes in the next 2 years. This is very unfortunate. However, I'm an optimist and I believe that there is a silver lining to every cloud.

Foreclosures have hit Michigan (Wayne County), Nevada (Clark County), Arizona (Maricopa County), and California (Riverside and Los Angeles Counties) hardest. There are thousands of foreclosed homes in these areas that are just waiting to be bought up at a premium. Once you find an acceptable location, we go onto the next step.

• Price and Purchase

This is probably the most critical part of the whole process, because as most financially literate people would concur, your profit is made when you purchase the item, not when you sell it. Anyway, the pricing of a foreclosed home can be a tricky task. I would therefore advise getting a Realtor or some sort of pricing expert to come in and price the home you're looking at. Paying $500 for their services will be well worth it in the long run. They are trained professionals that can advise you based on the quality of the home, location, and comparable houses in the area.

Another tricky part about purchasing a foreclosed home is the fact that in today's market, the market of uncertainty, it is critical to have a fantastic credit rating and probably have enough cash on hand to make the down payment on the home. The nice thing about making a down payment on a foreclosed home is that it is typically at a huge premium from the original price, because it is in the bank's best interest to offload the property, because it is substantial risk to them. Finding a buyer alleviates a small part of the banks risk in the short run.

Therefore, a home that would ordinarily be sold for $100,000 can now be bought for $70,000. Consider the following graph provided by Yahoo! Real Estate that shows the average price of a home in California over the past 12 months. It has declined from $516,000 to $430,000. Thats a 16.6% decline. And that is merely on average. If you really look hard you can find houses at a far greater premium. Talk about buying low.

**Click the Image to see it more clearly**
Purchasing the home will be the trickiest part of this whole transaction. There will be some fees surrounding this transaction, but they are inconsequential in the long term. You should always be thinking about this as an investment over time, except you are the one in control of this investment, which may be a lot different to your prior investments.

The purchase price is critical and you should negotiate this properly. Do not cut corners on this aspect of the process. It can be the difference between $1,000 and $10,000.

• Renovate and Sell

The final portion of the process is where the greatest amount of uncertainty comes in. Just as I have been telling you that these are uncertain times, and indeed they are, this is truly where you will encounter this reality. It is unfortunate that there isn't an unlimited pool of people trying to buy a home at any given time, but today, most people are in the same mindset that you probably are. That is that you're uncertain about the future and you'd rather hold onto your money, because you're not sure what's going to happen.

The way to improve your chances of sale is by performing the first part of the process properly. Find a great location in which there was just one or two homes that got foreclosed on. Finding a neighborhood in which foreclosures are rare is like finding a diamond in the rough. In my own experiences, I find that foreclosures are like dominoes. One falls and the rest around them soon follow. No one wants to buy in these areas, because they are cesspools of uncertainty. Find a great location!

Make sure you also renovate your home. This will cost a little bit of money, but a little bit of money can go a long way. Work hard yourself cleaning it and installing things yourself. If it is too hard for you, get a professional to do it. Find a friend who knows everything there is to know about installing windows or air filters (or whatever it may be). Pay them for their time. It will make a huge difference.

Selling homes is tough these days. Take a look at this graph that represents new home sales between January 2002 to January 2008. They have declined sharply in the past 12 months. However, uncertainty is bound to become certainty once again, and when that happens, home sales will increase. It just takes a little bit of nerve to make these moves right now because of all the uncertainty surrounding this investment.

In order to sell your home, use a Realtor. They know what they are doing and can find the right people for you. Also, your time is valuable so use it doing other things like creating your empire that you are well on your way to doing if you are getting yourself into selling foreclosures at this moment. It is a little uncertain, but remember, "buy low, sell high." Sounds easy, but sometimes you just have to look a little deeper and go against the crowd to truly get results.

• Conclusion

Currently, there is a huge opportunity in the housing market. You can make unbelievable money purchasing and selling foreclosed homes. Consider it a one to two year investment. Based on your ability to negotiate the price of the house, this could easily net you in excess of 30% over a short time frame. It is important to be absolutely methodical in going about purchasing a foreclosed home. Remember the process: Find the location, Price and Purchase, Renovate and Sell.

Buy low, sell high. Make me believe that isn't easier said than done.

Half Way Around The World

For about the past four months, I have had the great and life altering experience of calling Europe my home. When I say Europe has been my home, I mean all of Europe has been my home. I feel like I have traveled to every corner, every country, and seen so many different cities in my short time here, its really quite remarkable. The unfortunate thing about coming to Europe from America, is that at some point I will have to go back home. This date is looming ever closer, and at this point, I have less than a week to relish all that is Europe.

For the majority of my time abroad, I was living in Prague, which is the capital of the Czech Republic. It was a great place to live for its location and the fact that the Czech Republic hasn't switched over to the Euro just yet. However, the country receives all the benefits that other European countries in the Euro zone receive, namely the fact that they don't check passports when crossing borders which I found quite ridiculous and definitely a sign of how powerful economic agreements can be.

If you consider that the countries in Europe, some of them have been feuding with one another for centuries, all going just going to allow people to cross over their borders now just due to the fact that they all have the same currency, it really makes you think about the power of money and how economics can really be a bridge to diplomacy.

Alright, well now that I got thoroughly off topic lets get back to my findings. By simply figuring out the distances to and from the base of my travels, I found out the complete distance that I will travel between February 4th and June 10th (127 days), my expected departure back to America. In some cases, when I knew a city through which I passed, I made the measurement through that city, almost like a point of reference.

To figure out the distance between two cities, I was assisted by MapCrow (Mapcrow.info), who easily and accurately tell the distance between two cities in the world. Pretty incredible. Now, I'll provide you with my findings and do a little discussion about what I was able to draw from it.

• The Findings

**Click the Image to see it more clearly**

• Analysis

Wow, so in the past four months, I've really kind of run around. I traveled to a total of 11 countries (thats a new country every 12 days), and over 25 cities (thats a new city every 5 days). In related news, I've amassed over 3.5 gigabytes in pictures and videos from this trip, which is a lot to say the least. They'll provide me with wonderful memories for years, though.

In the total 127 days, I will end up traveling a total distance of 18,404.88 miles (29,619.06 kilometers). Those are big numbers. If you consider that the equatorial circumference of the Earth is 40,075.02 km, I pretty much went three-quarters way around the world. If you were to stretch my trip out from Chicago to somewhere in the World, I would have ended up in Tokyo, Japan most likely (going through Europe and Asia).

When you consider that the farthest point west I traveled was Bordeaux, France and the farthest point east I traveled was Athens, Greece, based on the total distance I traveled, I could have gone between those two points over 13 times.

A large portion of my trip has to be attributed to the distance in going to and from America, however. This portion of my trip accounts for 42% of the total distance traveled. However, when you consider how far Chicago is from the rest of Europe, its quite impressive that I did over 50% of my traveling in an area much smaller than the United States.

Although I was based in Prague, I did little traveling within the country, only accounting for 0.74% of my total travels. Liberec and Novy Bor were great places though and I recommend them to any willing traveler.

My distances covered in France and Switzerland are comparable to one another, each accounting for around 6% of my total distance traveled. I really only saw Interloken, Switzerland, whereas I was able to really experience, Nantes, Bordeaux, Tours, and Paris in France.

My trips to Flensburg, Germany, Amsterdam, Netherlands, and Copenhagen, Denmark are also of comparable distance, each accounting for roughly 4% each. In Flensburg, I was able to see a Handball Match, which I had wanted to go and check out. It probably took me just as long to get there as the amount of time I had in the actual city. Amsterdam was without doubt one of my most favorite trips in all of Europe. Copenhagen was an incredible city that I enjoyed so much. Very well run, beautiful, and Christiania.

The two biggest traveling distances are attributed to Italy and Greece which each have about 10% of my total distance traveled. Greece was a little easier to scale. The main distances were covered by plane, which was quick and painless. In Italy, however, I really did travel each and every one of those 1791 miles (2882 kilometers). I went from the North of the country to the South all via train. Finally got back to Prague by air, but even still, thats quite a far journey.

Smaller distances were accounted by my trips to Berlin, Germany, Vienna, Austria, and travel back from Budapest, Hungary, which each comprised around 1.5% of total distance traveled. These are both quick trips that can be made from Prague. Vienna was actually my first trip to a country in Europe, and what an amazing experience! I stayed in Budapest on my way back from Athens, Greece, so it wasn't a direct pathway back home, therefore, I count it as a separate journey.

Finally, the smallest traveling distance came from my trip to Malmo, Sweden. I went with some friends from Copenhagen across to this city for a day trip. In order to get there you have to cross a very long bridge over the gap between Denmark and Sweden and it is considered an architectural and engineering marvel. Only 33 miles (54 kilometers) and 0.184% of the trip.

• Conclusion

I'm really impressed with the large distance that I was able to travel during my short time in Europe. It was such an amazing adventure. Even more so, I think that this is a testament to modern transportation and how far humans have come in just a matter of decades. I was able to travel, on average, 144 miles (233 kilometers) a day. Now, I realize that I didn't actually traverse this distance on a daily basis (even though sometimes it feels like I did), but the sheer concept that I averaged over 100 miles a day boggles the mind.

Years ago, people would be born, grow up, and die in their little villages not being able to leave or see anything outside of a 50 mile radius, at best. Today, you can get on a plane, take a train, or ride a bus to anywhere your heart desires. I know I did.