Photography
Productivity
The 3/2 rule of employee productivity
Computing
NumPy array introduction
IPv4 X-day arrived and no one died
Music
Against background music
Adult culture
Math
Algebraic surfaces
Ramanujan formulas for computing pi
Statistics
The fourth quadrant
Statistical data mining tutorials
History
How the term “scientist” came to be with updates from Will Fitzgerald and Pat Ballew.
Thanks for the productivity post. I think the addition of a quality variable should also be considered. This is an issue I know that Wal-mart Distribution Center is aware of. There were loads of quality and productivity data available when I worked there in undergraduate school. They tried to control this quality issue and still have large production, but I bet there is some correlation. There are other variables that a company should also consider before trying to maximize productivity.
It’s a credit to the authors of the productivity post that they took the time to revisit the question controlling for industry and with a less biased data set. (Also a credit to the authors that they’re making their data set and code available.)
They still find a small effect, and admit that their data set is still slightly biased. I honestly wonder if there’s any true effect.
Not that I don’t sympathize with the complaint about large organizations. But I guess it looks like efficiencies of scale are balancing out inefficiencies of bureaucracy.