2050: Median age 53

"According to Bill Frey, a demographer at the University of Michigan, the median age in America in 2050 will be 36.2. In Europe it will be 52.7. That is a stunning difference, accounted for almost entirely by the dramatic ageing of the European population. At the moment, the median age is 35.5 in America and 37.7 in Europe." The Economist 08/24/2002 Half a Billion Americans?. Pondering on the implications, they go on: "There are plenty of other ways in which America could weaken itself economically or politically, but demography will offer a fine basis for future growth, and strength. The United States could well become even more powerful than it is today even if--as is to be hoped--populous developing countries such as India and China also manage to get richer." Same magazine, A Tale of Two Bellies.

Snow

See the snow at my place. Yesterday it began falling, maybe 30 centimeters or more. Suddenly Connecticut looks like Norway and Sweden. In the roadside there was a lot of cars involved in accidents. The van luckily handles the snow well, probably due to the winter tires and its weight.

Vacation

I will go on a christmas vacation in Denmark and arrive in Copenhagen on the 17th of December at noon. The return time is set to the 7th of January at 5:50 PM in Boston.

Now, what should I do about the christmas presents? See the article No-Shopping Christmas.

Turist

Jeg, en turist. Se billeder fra Toronto, Niagara Falls og New York (vælg kategorien "Amerika").

Toronto er checkket, infrastrukturen er velsmurt og der er styr på tingene. Der er nærmest en skandinavisk stemning over stedet: Pænt og rent, folk er venlige og afslappede, ingen synligt fattige og en lav grad af kriminalitet. Arkitekturen er til gengæld ikke skandinavisk, da hele byen ligner et stort rumskib. Toronto er også i højere grad et multietnisk samfund, med masser af indvandrere og hyggelige ghettoer. Jeg kunne fint forestille mig både at arbejde og få børn i denne by.

New York City er vild. Da jeg kom ud af Grand Central Station stirrede en rastafari med vampyr-katte-kontaktlinser på mig, mens hans punk-kæreste kyssede ham på kinden. Foran Guggenheim var der en ung investment banker der skreg af en ældre herre, der snuppede en taxa for næsen af ham. New York, New York. Du får følelsen af at det er i denne by tingene sker, at det er her verdens narcissister er samlet. Det er her du ser og bliver set. Det kunne være sjovt at bo i en et-værelser her et par år, så længe der er kræfter.

Isabel

Stormen Isabel har ramt USA, men her i Connecticut er der ikke meget vind lige nu. Meteorologerne regner med at der kommer mere vind senere på dagen, men ikke i en grad der er farlig.

Villa, Volva og Vovhund

Se siden Villa, Volvo og Vovhund om mine første indtryk af det amerikanske og de goder jeg har skrabet til mig.

Prior to August 2003 - Archive

Mon Aug 11, 05:21:10 PM

Book. The book "Discrete Choice Methods with Simulation" by Kenneth E. Train is an excellent exposition of a modeling framework that is gaining increasing popularity in marketing research. A chapter on mixed logit models is of special interest to any micro-level focused researcher.

Tue May 06, 10:30:50 PM

Academia. A professor, Dr. V. Kumar, situated at University of Connecticut - School of Business has accepted my proposal of him guiding my work on customer life-time value models. I will leave around September for half a year.

Wed Apr 16, 12:36:25 PM

Book. Want a clear undergraduate introduction to marketing research? Try "Marketing Research" by D.R. Lehmann, S. Gupta and J.H.Steckel. Besides me liking it you will also find it included on MIT Sloan's reading list for their undergraduate marketing course.

Mon Apr 14, 03:10:13 PM

Marketing Maturing. "Overall, the findings demonstrate the rapid maturation of the marketing discipline and the changing role of key journals in the process." - Hans Baumgartner & Rik Pieters have written "The Structural Influence of Marketing Journals: A Citation Analysis of the Discipline and Its Subareas Over Time" in Journal of Marketing, april 2003. Here they study how a large number of marketing journals influence each other through time.

Mon Apr 07, 03:14:48 PM

Brownian Motion Animation. On "Fowler's Physics Applets" you will find a java applet demonstrating Einsteins explanation of particle Brownian motion.

Mon Apr 07, 03:01:34 PM

OX. Do you want to import Microsoft Access database tables into the matrix programming language OX? Then you should download my import program. It includes a simple example.

Mon Apr 07, 02:59:28 PM

Idea: Burstiness. "Searching for sudden "bursts" in the usage of particular words could be used to rapidly identify new trends and sort information more efficiently, says a US computer scientist. Jon Kleinberg, at Cornell University in New York, has developed computer algorithms that identify bursts of word use in documents." - New Scientist

It could be interesting to apply this type of algorithm to companies incoming stream of customer communications, for instance from the complaint department. Then management could receive a report of the top-5 most "bursty" concepts at regular intervals.