Summarizing Sessions 4, 5 and 6

Hi all,

Sessions 4, 5 and 6 were "heavy" sessions - in terms of breadth, depth and R usage. So if you're feeling somewhat shaken at the end of them, don't worry it's normal, I'd be in the same boat if I were you. My guess is topics this wide and deep that we covered in the last 10 days are usually allowed more sink-in time and hands-on practice in even a good PhD program.(Of course, not strictly comparable - the stress there is on methods design, development and coding and not really on interpretation or application).

However, with the difficult part now out of the way, I believe, its time to consolidate the gains. It is time to bring together these three related but different topics under a common umbrella to stress interpretation and application. To this end, in Session 7 and in the second R tutorial planned for this Sunday (4-Nov 3-5pm in AC8 LT), I plan to spend a good amount of time re-capping, summarizing and integrating the topics of sessions 4,5 and 6. This will be a priority. To manage time, I shall condense some of the other topics scheduled for that session.

1. Here are the original sources for readings from these sessions (in case you want the unabridged versions):

For session 4:

Reading 1: Strategy to Market: Staking Out Valuable Positions

For Session 5:

Reading 1 - Turning silver into gold : Stealth marketing to the elderly

Reading 2: Segmenting China’s digital consumers

Reading 3: Companies Learn Your Secrets (NYT 2012)

For session 6

Reading 1 - The Museum Is Watching You (WSJ 2010)
Reading 2 - Habit formation and Shopping behavior (NYT 2012 article excerpt)
Reading 3 - Sensation Transference (Book Excerpt from Malcolm Gladwell's Blink)
Reading 4 - The Febreeze Experiment (Book Excerpt)

2. Other announcements

(i) I'm looking to have an open-house on R this Sunday again, where we go over not just R but interpretation of topics from sessions 4,5 and 6 together. Time planned is 3-5 pm. Pls let me know if this is a good time.

(ii) Received this comment from "HV":

Your blog on interpreting the Maps was very helpful, couldn’t find the blog on Factor Analysis though.

I responded with:

Thanks, HC. I haven't made one for factor analysis ('cept the session 4 classwork Rcode posted originally). However, a cursory look at some of the submitted HWs tells me an "in-depth explanation of factor analysis" blog-post might be a good idea. Would help with HWs for both session 4 and session 5, besides.

So, yes. I will put up a separate post explaining factor analysis interpretation in a little more detail using a HW Q for session 5.
Update: That post is here - Interpreting Factor Analysis Results

(iii) I'll putup data and instructions (and if applicable, code) for the homework of session 6 later today. It will be due next week Saturday. The plan is to have you analyze the emotional content of city-specific twitter chatter on the recent cyclone 'Neelam' that hit the TN coast. We're looking at Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad and Bangalore for this. Hope fully, we'll find enough of a 'story' in the twitter feed to make interpretation worthwhile for you.

(iv) I'll hand over my notes on various readings in the past 3 sessions as an addendum of slides next class. FYI.

That's it for now. Ciao.

Sudhir