The Psychology of Numbers

Ever since stereo volume controls moved from potentiometers to digital buttons, I’ve always set my volume to either an even number, or a multiple of five.  While looking at memes on the Internet, I found some posts from other people basically sharing the same preference.

And so I dug deeper into it.  And as it turns out, Dan King of the University of Singapore and Chris A Janiszewski of the University of Florida have done the research on this.  This article from Wired Magazine, we assign personalities to numbers based on their arithmetical properties, triggering an emotional response.

And so odd numbers are more memorable, hence my preference for summarizing things in three or five items.  Even numbers are easier to process because they appear more frequently in multiplication tables.

But why do I like 14, but not 26, nor 34.  This piece from The Guardian explains why people like the number seven, and so 14 is fine as a volume setting, but not 7.  But 26 only has two other factors besides one and itself, and one of them is 13.  Similarly, 34 only has 17 and 2 besides 1 and itself.

But why are multiples of five acceptable?  Every other one is odd.  Most likely, it’s because we have five fingers on one hand, and it’s easy to accept five, or any of their multiples.  But then, how did we get to a clock with 12 numbers, and each number represents five minutes?  That’s yet another rabbit hole I’ll have to dig into in another time.

Salesforce Inline Editing: Hype vs. Reality

Salesforce has been lagging in inline-editing capabilities for a while.  When Clari burst onto the scene, that was one of the earlier features that sellers loved - the ability to edit records without having to open them one by one.  Even a free version of Scratchpad had better inline-editing abilities.

Salesforce enabled inline-editing in list views, but it is limited to a single record type.  That means either an admin created list views for users, or a trainer taught them how to create list views that had a record type filter.  Both are not scalable, and the latter is a bit more complicated for a user whose primary job is to sell, not to be Salesforce experts.

Beyond the single record type limitation, not all fields are supported.  This Salesforce help page details them out.  The standard Next Step would've been supported, except many companies feel 255 characters are not enough, so they have a custom "Next Steps" field that is a long text area.  Long text areas are not supported.  Sales Stage would've been supported, but most companies create a dependent "Reason" field when something is lost or won, and fields with dependent picklists are also not supported.

Salesforce has since released inline-editing capabilities in reports.  Since the Summer '21 release, they have been making improvements to the capability.  Unfortunately, apart from the record type and the dependent picklist limitations, the others still exist.  You still can't edit Probability directly, nor can you edit long text areas.

And this is causing frustration from the users.  Now, should you try to move to the standard Next Step with 255 characters and argue that Next Step should be short and sweet?  Probably.  But what about other things like Customer Success Notes?

It's a step in the right direction but it's not a full-fledged feature that will make your users jump up and down and be happy about Salesforce Lightning unfortunately.  It is a journey, and we're all in it.

Am I asking too much?

 I am writing this as an Apple shareholder and customer.

Much has been said about planned obsolescence, how we no longer build things to last, how the manufacture and disposal of electronics and appliances are harmful to the environment.  I came from the generation where refrigerators last 20+ years and computers that doubled in speed every 18 months until having multiple cores became more mainstream.  So I have seen both sides.

And so to some extent, I expect computers to last longer than five years.  I've had a 2009 Macbook which I kept until 2018.  Granted, it was relegated to light duties like surfing the web or playing music for my then 4 year old.

I have a 2011 Macbook Pro, which works to this day, except for the battery that doesn't hold a charge (I accept the lifespan of NiMH batteries) and consequently, a mouse pad that doesn't work because the battery has expanded and is pushing the trackpad mechanism.  But the camera works flawlessly.

Which brings me to my 2016 Macbook Pro.  The camera has stopped working, and after my own troubleshooting, two trips to the Apple Store for various resets, OS reinstall, as well as reseating the cables that presumably connect the display to the main board, the geniuses at Apple have deemed my laptop broken.  

The option given to me was to buy a new display for $478 plus tax.  Why a new display, and not just the camera?  I presume these are integrated units, or built as a single replaceable part, which brings us back to the e-waste problem.  The display is working, so why replace the whole thing for just the camera?

What's frustrating is that the software-based diagnostic test revealed that the camera is perfectly fine.  So I thought it was just a software issue.  But if it was, an OS reinstall would've fixed it.  And if the cable was loose, why can the diagnostics software detect the camera?

My wife uses this 2016 Macbook Pro.  It works fine otherwise, except for the camera, which she needs to occasionally join a video call.  It's just not worth spending $478 for it.  It certainly isn't worth getting a new one, since I am typing this on a 2020 Macbook Pro.  These aren't business laptops that are on a three year refresh cycle.  

For a thousand dollar laptop, is it too much to ask for the camera to last more than 5 years?

Trust

"I am not my father" is a familiar TV/movie trope, and people love a good redemption story.  And then there's that phrase: "The apple does not fall far from the tree."  If we forget for a moment that he is his father's son, how can we evaluate his character?  After all, isn't that the only way we should select our political leaders?  

When evaluating public companies and their leadership, we look at their accomplishments, their public actions, their behavior during earnings calls, or any public forum.  We are not there day to day to observe their decision-making process, and so we have to trust that the leaders will do the right thing for the company whose shares we own.

It is the same for political leaders.

So, let's forget for a moment that he is his father's son.  What has he accomplished?  What is his observable behavior that will help build that trust?

He was educated in England and in the US.  He lied about getting a political science degree.  He lied about it when he was younger, before the Internet made it easy to email someone at Oxford and simply ask for the truth.

Looking at his website, and not having the easy access to the body of the house bills, the headlines of the house bills he has authored are mostly construction projects in his district.  While I applaud him for trying to improve his district, everybody does that.  There is nothing special there. And we know those projects are rife with corruption and kickbacks.

The only notable house resolution is the one relating to the Kalayaan Island Group.  Oh, and he wants his father's remains to return and lie in state in Malacañang.

As governor of Ilocos Norte, all I can see are certificates of merit that are meaningless to me.  They lack substance.

There is a section for speeches on his website, the latest one is dated 2016 as of this writing.  There are a few YouTube videos out there, and in the one I watched, he still referenced his father.

My remaining question, forgetting again that he is his father's son, is what is his character?  Because that is the only way to determine whether he is trustworthy enough to hold the highest office.  We will disagree on some issues, but like an employee trusts their CEO to do the right thing, we must be able to trust political leaders to do the right thing.

And nothing tells me that he will do the right thing.

Hashtag: I Choose Love

 
I’ve written previously about my general distrust of the media – partly fueled by growing up in the Philippines under a dictatorship.  And partly, of course, is the fact that the media is controlled by people who are looking to sell more ads.  And sensational stories sell.
 
When I first read and heard about violence against Asian Americans in the news, my first reaction even as a first-generation Filipino immigrant is that the ratio against the raw number of crimes is miniscule.  After all, the national media is not covering as much about Uighurs in China, probably because it happens on foreign soil, and does not get the same clicks or views as pitting Asian Americans against Whites.  And then it becomes an us-vs-them which fuels further division.  Clearly that is not what America stands for.
 
There was also the feeling of insulation because we live in a fairly diverse part of the US.  The San Francisco Bay Area is home to many Asian American immigrants.  These things happen in other parts of the country.  And then it happened.  San Francisco has seen a spate of attacks on elderly Chinese.  A Filipino American woman was attacked in San Jose.  The data does not lie.  There has been an increase of reports of attacks on Asian Americans, at least according to a study by the  folks at CSU San Bernardino.
 
My first reaction is anger.  These criminals must be beaten and given a taste of their own medicine.  But then I always go back to the old advice that there are few things you can control.  But what you can control is how you react.  Anger is not the answer.  I’m not condoning their actions.  It’s just that there are laws on the books that outline the punishment that fits their crime.  And we live in a country with due process, and I believe in that process.
 
And then there’s the campaign to #StopAsianHate.  But what does it achieve?  What about just stopping hate all together?  What about stopping any crime, whether it’s against Asians, blacks, whites, women, or men?  What about choosing love?  I choose love.  Mother Teresa once said, “I will never attend an anti-war rally; if you have a peace rally, invite me.”
 
It is true that all humans are biased.  Our brains are wired that way.  Thousands of years of evolution have not removed it, because up until a few thousand years ago, we would have had to assess predator or prey, or friend or foe in seconds, to trigger our fight or flight response.  Imagine having to sort through all the characteristics every time you encounter another person or animal.  You’d be dead before you make a decision.  I have to admit there have been times I judged a person based on what I initially see – the way they looked, the way they dressed, and I have reacted accordingly.   And it's because they're different from what I have established in my mind as "friend". I have to be better.
 
We are no longer in that sort of danger that our ancestors had to contend with.  We are, in many ways, a civilized society.  So, in choosing love, I choose to look at people as individuals, as unique human beings with fears and motivations.  I will strive to treat each person individually, react based on their behavior, to take the time, and not make generalizations based on their skin color, hair style, eye shape, fashion choices, or gender, or religion.  In the words sung by Michael Jackson, with lyrics by Siedah Garrett and Glen Ballard, "I'm starting with the man in the mirror."
 
I may not be able to change the world.  But I can change myself. #IChooseLove
 
 
 
 
 

This sounds really familiar...

If you have kids of a certain age and watch Disney, you will have seen Frozen II at least once.  And if you are of a certain age, Generation X and listened to Western pop music, you would have noticed that the song "Lost in the Woods" sounds eerily familiar.  It sounds like songs by Chicago, or REO Speedwagon, and for good reason.  As detailed in this blog post, the composers were inspired or at least big fans, of these 80's power ballads.  It reminds me of "Will You Still Love Me?". There's another 80's song that has a very similar lick, but I can't recall the rest of the song to find the title.

On the one hand, I can lament that nobody comes up with truly original songs anymore.  Everybody is singing some variation of I-V-viii-IV these days.  And the chord cycle is not new.  You can watch this clip to understand what I'm talking about.  And while reusing chord cycles are excusable, (after all, how many combinations can you make from seven chords in four bars, or twelve bars?), sounding almost exactly like another song is not.  The courts found Robin Thicke and Pharell to have ripped off Marvin Gaye, as detailed in this Rolling Stone article.  I personally didn't find that too close, but some of you may remember the Led Zeppelin vs. Spirit, "Stairway to Heaven" vs. "Taurus".

On the other hand, hearing familiar sounds soothes our brains.  When "Hey Ya" by Outkast was introduced, radio stations had to sandwich it between familiar songs, because "Hey Ya" was so different.  (Read this for more detail.)

What is the point of all this?  And how do we bring this back to business?  My point is, while companies are different, at a certain level, they are all the same.  They have the same challenges and business problems they are trying to solve.  Each company may just be at different stages of their journey.  If they were all different, then business applications like CRM and ERP will not find much success.  Everyone would be building custom apps for their own businesses.

And so while the song sounds new, it still sounds familiar.  The things you learned - skills, business processes, solutions - from previous companies are portable.  (Unless it's like "Hey Ya" - a highly specialized type of skill or knowledge that has narrow applications, like video compression codecs.)   

Customer Master and data cleansing is a common problem.  And it's not new.  Before web domains were commonplace, you would define an account as their headquarter location - a name and address.  Preventing duplicates is a challenge.  In the B2C world, (I worked for an insurance company), before email addresses, and without requiring people to give social security numbers, we relied on a name, a birthday, and an address.  And that's not perfect either.  I could have two policies, and on one, I gave my middle initial, and on the other, I did not.  Or I may have since moved.  How do we have one record for one person so we can treat them as one person?

And guess what's like a subscription business?  Insurance!  You want people to pay yearly, or quarterly, or monthly - whatever payment term they agreed to.  And you have to keep engaging with your customers, not just come around when the premium is due.  Otherwise, they could cancel, or just choose not to pay the renewal.  You also want to up-sell or cross-sell, or "land and expand" as they call it these days, as their financial needs evolve, you start offering other financial products.    

So, whether it's B2C, B2B, insurance, financial services, software, hardware, subscription, XaaS, pay-as-you-grow, consumption, everything is familiar!

What are you packing?

 

The edge of the area covered by the evacuation order is a quarter mile from our house.  If it does expand beyond that, we’ll have to evacuate.

 

Some evacuation orders are sudden.  You may be asked to leave immediately because you are in imminent danger.  And there are plenty of resources online on how to prepare, and what to bring if you only had 15 minutes tops.  Ready.gov is a good starting point.

 

But for us, we have some time to pack.  And what did we pack?

 

Besides the usual stuff that you find online – passports, social security cards, a change of clothes, personal items, we had time to consider other things.  Apart from practical considerations – what will fit in the car, for example – we asked ourselves two things.  And it gave us a chance to evaluate what's really important.

 

First: what things are irreplaceable?  I’m not here to argue that we should not be collecting things, but rather, experiences.  It is inevitable that those experiences have things associated with them.  We definitely packed photographs.  We are from the generation that still had printed photos and negatives.  While some have been digitized, many have not.  The hard drives with the digital photos were packed as well.  On the other hand, we have souvenirs from our travels that we did not pack.

 

The second, more difficult question is: what things are harder to replace?  Harder is a personal threshold.  It could be purely financial, or time-based, or both.  Clothes can be replaced.  You can walk into a Target or a Gap, or buy clothes online.  But what about that wedding dress?  We didn’t have a wedding dress, but I did have the Barong Tagalog (a traditional Filipino formal wear for men) that I wore at my wedding.  I ultimately decided not to pack it.  I haven’t read the book, but Marie Kondo’s question, “What sparks joy?” is appropriate here.

 

What if you had a growing collection of items that took you years to collect, but not valuable enough to insure?  You could have a sneaker collection, or a stamp collection, or some other collection that has more sentimental than monetary value.  I happen to have a collection of knives.  I packed them. 

 

Say you did have insurance.  It only pays you the monetary equivalent.  If Bill Gates lost his Porsche 959 to a fire, the insurance company could pay him a million dollars for the loss.  But I doubt anybody else who has a 959 is willing to part with his.  That means even if Bill Gates was made whole by his insurance company, he will most likely not have another 959, not that reacquiring a 959 is top priority for him.  I have an older 911 which is insured for an agreed value.  That model is certainly not as rare as a 959.  We’re leaving the 911 if we were asked to evacuate.  While it does spark joy, it’s not top priority.  If I had a third driver in the household, then I would drive the 911 out of there.

 

So, what are you packing?