Changes in fortune

I have spent the past two weeks trying to find a local company which uses Priority and is prepared to participate in the pilot study for my doctoral research. I did find one company (not local) but it turns out that there are only three users in this company and the wife of the person with whom I have to talk is expecting give birth any minute (she finally gave birth on Tuesday). I remembered that someone who used to work with me years ago now works for a company which also uses Priority; I found their phone number and have been dialing it for several days, but receiving no answer. In short, I was getting exceedingly frustrated with the entire exercise.

Yesterday I received a phone call from another ex-colleague, someone with whom I developed several of the key concepts for my company during the mid-90s (obviously pre-Priority). He has wandered from company to company but has always remembered our time together as important. He tells me that he has recently started work with a company which is situated within walking distance from where I normally work; they use Priority but badly. He wishes that I come and consult for them.

I agreed but also mentioned my doctoral research; this person was only too pleased to volunteer his company. This might be seen as a quid pro quo, but anyway I would have gone and talked to them for a few hours, regardless of any payback. Of course, should this become a more permanent arrangement, then it would be with payment. If indeed this company is situated within walking distance, then all sorts of possibilities open up.

In the early evening, I checked my email; there were two very important letters awaiting me. The first was from the organisers of the conference to be held in May - my paper has been accepted! The paper was sent to three academics for peer review and their comments were attached to the acceptance notice. These very much upset me when I first read them although a second reading made things clearer. I was writing what was described to me as a position paper:  based more on my opinions and less academic. The reviewers thought that the paper should be academic, first and last, and criticised my inclusion of opinions. After a night's rumination, it seems that what they were expecting was a shortened version of my research proposal, which includes such formalities as hypotheses and methodology.

I have two weeks in which to create a new version of my paper which should address the comments from the reviewers. This could mean simply adding material at the end of the paper or it could mean almost completely rewriting it. Another option is creating a condensed version of the research proposal. Unfortunately, it is now the weekend, and although I wrote to the conference's co-organiser, Dr Felienne Hermans, for guidance this morning, she may not reply until Monday, which means that two valuable days might be lost.

I considered posing a question at the Academia Stack Exchange, but after writing the question, I discovered that it was a near duplicate of a previously asked question: What changes after peer review but prior to final submission are acceptable? Some of the answers were: 

• Following the acceptance of a paper, I would not make any changes that go beyond "editorial"—that is, improving the grammar, or adding a recently published citation. These do not change the "technical" content of the paper.
• If you receive reviews, no matter of what sort, but so that the editor allows you revisions, you should make the revisions necessary to sort out the problems.  

I think that the best response would be to add the research questions and some of the hypotheses, thus improving the academic strength of the paper. I can add a fair amount of material without exceeding the maximum length - I only have two pages, but the font is Times New Roman 10 pts, which is fairly small.

Thus this coming week is going to be very busy: revising the paper, consulting, working on the pilot study ... and let us not forget, the day job which this week includes another trip to Lod with regard to Imos and a trip to Haifa (more Imos and consulting). Maybe on Thursday I will get to the three man company.

Frankie

I have been watching a television series on BBC Entertainment called 'Frankie', which is about the trials and tribulations of a district nurse somewhere in Britain (a close look reveals that the series is filmed in Bristol but the story does not refer to this). It seems that there are only six episodes and I've seen three of them, enough to have sufficient material about which to write.

Whilst one might assume that the series can be compared to 'Casualty' (also originally filmed in Bristol, but now in Cardiff), there is in fact very little in common. True, the series follows the lives of medical professionals and there are always new 'patients of the week', but 'Casualty' has a bigger cast (with some not appearing each episode) and of course takes place in a hospital casualty department, where unfortunately death is always a possibility. 'Frankie' has a smaller cast and less pressing medical issues (although there was a death in episode 2).

If anything, 'Frankie' reminds me of 'William and Mary', although without the William story line and the sentimentality. Frankie is a district nurse whereas Mary is a midwife; they always go the extra mile for their patients and sometimes get into trouble for doing so. There is even a physical resemblance: Eve Myles (Frankie) looks quite like Julie Graham (Mary) although the latter is Scottish and the former Welsh (sometimes I can hear traces of her accent peeking through). Mary was lucky in love whereas Frankie (at least, so far) is not.

It seems as if every episode has two story lines: the first, naturally, is concerned with Frankie and the second is with one of the four other nurses under Frankie's command. 

All in all, I think that this is a good television drama: well written and well acted; modest, in true British television drama style.

I have also been watching an American series, 'Madam Secretary', which is definitely not the real thing. This was touted as worth watching for those that enjoyed 'The West Wing', but I beg to differ. The difference between MS and TWW (and Frankie, for that matter) is in the scripts: MS has so-so scripts with plenty of holes and super-quick diplomacy and/or solutions. The eponymous secretary (played by Tia Leoni, who is the best thing about the series) is a university professor (ex-CIA analyst) who gets catapulted into the job of US Secretary of State. Her agenda and methodology are somewhat different to that of her predecessor (who died in an accident) which often causes tension both with her staff and with the President (or more accurately, with his chief of staff). The problem with the stories is that they are all superficial and sometimes come with non sequiturs (for example, the fifth episode starts with someone blowing up an oil pipeline between Canada and USA; this event is referenced during the first ten minutes then completely disappears). 

In my opinion, the best scenes are within the secretary's family: the secretary's husband is a university professor in ethics/religion and of course their three children are bright. These scenes are intelligent, interesting and developed; the scenes set in the secretary's office are ok and the world-wide scenes are too simplistic. There are occasionally hints of some great drama hiding behind the scenes (was the death of the CIA agent shown in the pilot a real accident or a hit? Did the previous SoS have some hidden agenda?) but these threads are not developed. It's ok to have some kind of conspiracy ideas floating around, but they should be expanded and not simply mentioned in the final minute of each show.

At least, the series is watchable, which is more than I can say for most American series. But it tries to accomplish too much and in doing so, spreads itself too thinly. Reviews on IMDB are roughly the same as mine.

[SO: 3801; 3,15,36]

The Beatles, Apple and me

Years ago, my parents made the acquaintance of a British family living in Israel; I think that the connection was that the wife of this family was a niece of one of my aunts (by marriage), but I am probably wrong. This lady has kindly continued visiting my father once or twice a month for years. I have met the husband more than a few times, but frequently he was travelling on business. They were present at my father's 90th birthday celebration.

Several years ago, I realised that the "Stephen" who knows my parents is named Stephen Maltz; he is not just someone called Stephen Maltz but rather THE Stephen Maltz who in the mid-60s told the Beatles that unless something was done about their financial situation, they would soon be bankrupt. Although I have tried to draw him out on this topic, he always kept quiet.

Stephen has now written and published an E-book called "The Beatles, Apple and me", which is available from Amazon. As soon as I saw this, I found the book, downloaded it and commenced reading. A few hours later, I emerged, knowing much more about the Beatles' business set-up than I had done previously. 

Stephen worked with the Beatles during their heyday, from 1964-8 and was one of the directors of Apple, so of course his sources are impeccable. This book makes for fascinating reading for anyone interested in the business side of the Beatles.

That said, I do have some criticisms of the book which hopefully can be addressed, allowing a new edition to be uploaded to Amazon. Rapid turn-around of editions is one of the advantages of e-books and should be utilised as fully as possible. Some of these criticisms are about the e-book itself (layout) and some are about the contents.  I have sent these criticisms to Stephen and hopefully he will implement at least some of my suggestions.

Summer in February

We've been having some strange weather recently: at lunchtime on Saturday, the barometer showed a temperature of 26.6° C with a prediction of rain. The weather forecast on the news says that the coming week will be cold and possibly rainy....

In recognition of the heat, I decided that lunch would be Mediterranean: lemon chicken breast, steamed vegetables and baked potatoes. In the morning, I cut  a chicken breast into strips then put them into a marinade of olive oil and lemon juice, the latter being freshly pressed from lemons grown on the lemon tree in the garden. I diced some potatoes, seasoned them with parsley then mixed them with some of the marinade. This went into the oven at 150° C for an hour. 

The vegetables were red and yellow bell peppers, a courgette, onion and the new 'hit': diced kale. This mixture was cooked in the microwave for 15 minutes, inside the 'spice oven'.  There was an item on the television a few days about 'super foods', one of which was kale. I have been reading about different ways of cooking it: cooking makes the flavenoids (the "goodness") more accessible but one has to prevent too much being leached away. The spice oven seems to be the best way of steaming as it requires no added water so it probably loses the least amount of nutrients.

The chicken breast slices were cooked for a few minutes each side in the heavy frying pan which I bought a few weeks ago. The meal was served with freshly pressed orange juice. The result: delicious!

The time machine

Looking for some old papers the other day, I came across this picture

I imagine that it dates from 1984/5, judging by the equipment. That's me in the accountancy office, typing data into the keyboard/printer combination that we had. In a few years' time, we will have progressed to screens with keyboards, then to having our own server.

Looking at it reminds me of a similar picture: Bill Gates from at least a decade earlier, typing into a similar machine whilst still at school. Compare where he is today and where I am.

Sending emails automatically, continued

I finished my previous blog entry by writing someone [has just] phoned me and asked how she could send a customer a [PDF] copy of all the delivery notes for that customer for the previous (or current) day. Despite considering several hi-tech solutions, some of which would have utilised the new capability of sending email automatically, we plumped for an exceedingly low tech solution. As the delivery notes have already been printed, probably the easiest way of sending a PDF would be to scan the delivery notes on our combo printer/scanner; the address of the recipient is already stored within the machine, so the scan can be sent directly to the customer.

This reminds me of a story from when I was young (aged somewhere around 6). My family had traveled from Bristol to Bournemouth in order to see my grandparents (this is one way of dating the story as they died when I was young) and we stopped at a roadside restaurant in order to eat (a 'Berni cafe', IIRC). At the time, I was problematic in my eating habits and requested a simple omelette, with nothing added. When the omelette was served, it came with some addition (I don't remember what); when my parents complained, the chef came out and explained that it was beneath his professional dignity to serve a plain omelette. This is how I feel about the PDF solution. On the other hand, it achieves the target with minimal overhead.

Other circumstances lead me to think of another use of automatic emails: the costing program takes about eight hours to run, which is why it is always executed from the task scheduler. But sometimes, for unknown reasons, it crashes, normally soon after it starts (just after midnight). If I remember to check whether this program is still running, I only do so at around 9am. It occurred to me that the task scheduler could run a check at 6am to see whether the costing program is running; if it isn't, then I should be sent an email.

I found a way of doing this (the problem is checking whether the program is active) and it will be interesting to see how it works out. I decided to send the email both to my home address and to my mobile phone: I normally check emails at home at 6am, so the timing will be right.

This reminds me of Cliff Stoll and "The Cuckoo's Nest", a fascinating book which I read twenty five years ago. He was able to program his server to send a message to his pager when a certain event happened. It's only taken me about 28 years to catch up.

Sending emails automatically via Priority

Previous to Priority, my company worked with an ERP program which had very strong support for spawning jobs and creating reports in the background. This was very useful as some reports used to require a long time - at least an hour - to be created. There was also a very simple but powerful method of creating macro files which would create these reports. As I recall, I would write something like

21.4
14
03
32
4
LP2:

which would mean "run report 21.4, pass it the parameters 14, 03 and 32, then send the output to printer LP2:" (the 4 meant 'run the program immediately' as opposed to 'run the program in the background'). Aligned with the job scheduler of the server, I would define such jobs to run during the dead time of the evening and early morning. Each morning I would arrive at work to find a huge pile of paper with the various reports printed; I would divide up the reports and put them in people's pigeon holes.

Time progresses: we no longer have pigeon holes, line printers and the old, single tasking, ERP program; we now have multi-tasking Priority and email.  When we first started work with Priority, I adopted my habits to running reports manually in the morning then sending them by email. This takes about 15 minutes but sometimes can be a hassle as I prefer to create the reports before people have started working.

Priority does have a task scheduler although accessing and using it is harder than the old program. I use it a great deal for programs which take a long time to run (e.g. costing) and produce no output. Several times the systems manager and I have tried to define email on the server but without success ... until yesterday. Finally I can send emails automatically from the server.

At first, I thought that this was excellent, but when I started to examine the situation, I was less than thrilled. The main problem is that there is no simple way of passing parameters to the programs; even though I have found a way of overcoming this, it means that I frequently have to rewrite the programs (or more accurately, create a copy of the normal program then change the copy) to handle automatic parameters. Another, more conceptual, problem is that I like to see some of the reports and comment where necessary; sending them automatically means that I won't see them at all.

So far, I have adopted three reports for automatic distribution: two go to distribution lists and one goes to myself so that I can work on the data. Both this report and one of the distribution list reports take a comparatively long time (about 10 minutes) to run, although I used to interleave their creation with other tasks. In other words, I would start  a long report then work on something else until the report displayed, thus not wasting time waiting for reports to appear. All three reports are defined in the equivalent of a large macro file whose execution is defined in the task scheduler. Thus I can add new functionality without having to change the task scheduler.

It has to be said that few reports take an excessive amount of time to run, so automating them is not much of an advantage. Creating them automatically does take responsibility off my shoulders and also means that I don't have to log in first thing in the morning when I'm on holiday. 

Over the next week, I am going to see how using an automated task can improve the quality of my work. 

After having completed writing the above (but prior to publication), someone phoned me and asked how she could send a customer a copy of all the delivery notes for that customer for the previous (or current) day - there can be at least ten such notes. It occurs to me that I could write a program to do this and I could even automate it. Saving overhead time for users is always a good idea and is my prime directive.

Copper socks (3)

Four years ago, I wrote about the problems which I was having with my feet and how the solution seemed to be copper socks. As I recall, I bought three or four pairs of socks, but over time they shrunk and I had to throw them out. Since then, I haven't seen them in shops. About two years ago, I was told to throw out all the socks which I own as they were probably infested with fungi. I then started laser treatment on my toenails, which wasn't too successful, and I also bought new socks - 100% cotton.

Surprisingly, it is hard to find such socks in Israel; the best that I could find were 95% cotton and 5% polyester. So I ordered from the internet and was pleased with my purchase. A few months ago, I went to order a new batch of socks and discovered that the supplier (via Amazon) wouldn't ship to Israel. I found a new supplier in China and ordered from there, but when the socks arrived, it turned out that they too were only 95% cotton.

When I bought new walking shoes in December, I saw that there were copper socks for sale. Whilst I was pleased at renewing my acquaintance with this item, I was less pleased at the price - 85 NIS, which today is about $23. I bought one pair and have worn them about five times since (in rotation with the cotton socks which I still have). I have noticed that with continual wear, the cotton socks develop holes - mainly at the toes but sometimes at the heel - and eventually have to be discarded. Although I would like to renew my inventory with copper socks, I baulked at the price.

Eventually, a light went on in my head: order from America - as I did four years ago. The cupron site is offering a pack of six pairs of dress socks for $85, including postage. Thus each pair of socks will cost 51 NIS - a 40% saving over the shop in Bet Shemesh. Definitely worthwhile.

End of an era

After at least twenty years sitting on the same chair, I was persuaded to upgrade to a new one. There are several advantages of working in a factory which manufactures office chairs: 

•  I don't have to look far to find a chair
• There is a large selection
• It doesn't cost anything
• I can try a chair for a few days then swap it for another.

Whilst this 'bank manager' chair seems suitable, there are a few problems with it. I could do with some head support and the seat seems to be a bit large (I've noticed in the past half hour some mild pain from the underside of my thighs), although this may be simply part of getting used to the chair.

In some respects, finding a new chair (on which I sit for eight hours a day, four-five days a week, year in, year out) is similar to buying a new pair of shoes: one is so used to the old, flexible, pair that the new shoes will always feel stiff and uncomfortable. An office chair is more expensive than a pair of shoes (although surprisingly not that much more expensive; I think that this chair costs two to three times what my last pair of shoes cost) but of course lasts much longer.

I was told that in a few days a chair will be returning which has head support (the chair was at a customer for trial purposes), so I'll try that one out when it comes. I'm not yet convinced by this grey chair.

[SO: 3776; 3, 15, 36]

Shetland

Like no small percentage of the population, I too have been struck by a mild respiratory virus. It was sufficient to keep me in bed for one day, but I've been up and working (but not walking) since. Today I seem to have lost the power of speech.

While resting, I read the first four books of Ann Cleeve's "Shetland quartet". I'm not sure now how I found these; although a television series has been made of the novels, they haven't been broadcast here yet. It turns out that I read them in the wrong order, although this doesn't seem to have made much difference, apart from changes in the personal life of the books' protagonist, Jimmy Perez.

Viewed in order, the first book ('Raven black') takes place in Lerwick, the capital of the Shetland Islands; the second ("White nights") takes place in the far north of that island; the third ("Red bones") is set on a secondary island, Whalsay, and the fourth ("Blue lightning") is set on another island, Fair Isle. Thus one receives a geography lesson whilst solving mysteries.

Apart from the fourth book, I found the first three tedious reading. The plots are very slow, presumably reflecting the nature of the Shetlands, and there seem to be too many characters, most of which are related to each other. These books aren't police procedurals but rather who-dun-its, 'Blue lightning' especially. Unlike the Sophie Hannah books, these were at least readable, but I found them hard going and not interesting. I couldn't make any connection with any of the characters.

None of the books start with a murder: there's a certain amount of introductory material first. But all of them have a second murder about half way through; in fact, I found myself thinking whilst reading one of them that a second murder should occur soon - as it did, a few more pages in.

I'll give one of the books a second try in about a week: it may be that my general low feeling is affecting my reading and appreciation.

[SO: 3756; 3, 15, 36]

A pleasant surprise whilst writing 800 blogs

Following on from yesterday's blog, it became apparent that I would need the research questionnaire translated into Russian. I showed the Hebrew version to a few people near me and their faces took on the same expression that mine does when shown something when I'm not wearing my glasses.

There is no need to examine whether these people are even representative of the general Russian speaking population; if they can't read the questionnaire (or reading it would require an extortionate amount of time), then they are not going to answer the questions, which means that I lose people from my population.

So, as I suggested yesterday, I built a temporary version of the questionnaire by copying each sentence (questions, answers and surrounding text) into Google Translate, then copied the Russian text into a file, maintaining the same order. There are some answers which I didn't bother translating, as either they are solely numerical (e.g. 26-50%) or they are answers which repeat themselves (I agree, etc).

I am well aware of the fact that translations prepared in this manner are somewhat lacking (I've been on the other end of this, having had to correct a translation from Hebrew to English) and so I decided to ask more capable Russian speakers in my company to revise the Russian. I sent off four or five letters, and to my pleasant surprise, received affirmative answers within minutes. At least one said that the writer would be only too pleased to help. I suggested in the letter that the questionnaire be divided into sections so that no one has to translate/correct more than ten questions, but one person offered to correct the entire questionnaire.

It seems that I am not used to such kindness any more!

---

On another matter, this is now my 800th blog. With the help of the analysis program which I wrote a month ago, I can easily show what the hot topics of the last 100 blogs have been.

Tag	Count
DBA	32
Holiday	16
Health	12
Personal	12
Sorrento	9
Programming	8
Sicily	7
ERP	6
Cooking	5
Films	5
Israel	5
Excel	4
Kindle	3
Mobile phone	3
Statistics	3
TV series	3
1975	2
Computer	2
Delphi	2
Jewish holidays	2
MIDI	2
Maccabi Tel Aviv	2
Meta-blogging	2
Obituary	2
Office automation	2
SQL	2
DCI Banks	1
Enigma	1
Firebird	1
Food science	1
Habonim	1
In-basket	1
Kibbutz	1
Literature	1
Olivia Williams	1
Organisational behaviour	1
Peter Robinson	1
Psychology	1
Richard Thompson	1
Robert Silverberg	1
Sandy Denny	1
Swell Season	1
Yoni Rechter	1

No real surprises there. DBA and holiday together comprise 48% of the blogs (every 'holiday' blog was either also 'Sorrento' or 'Sicily', so these latter two labels don't count) and if I add in health, then 60% of the blogs are covered. So now we know what has occupied my attention since April 2014.

The interesting thing is that subjects which used to occupy me - programming, music, books and films - seem no longer to be the subject of attention. Does this mean that I am becoming more focused as I become older? Or could it mean that there are fewer and fewer pieces of new (to me) music about which I want to write?

Position paper submitted

A month ago, I wrote about writing a paper for the SEMS 15 conference which will be held in Florence in May. At some stage, I also wrote about how writing a paper has similarities with recording a song: the first two takes were ok, but not what I wanted. The third take was very good and this has been the basis of a slow but on-going dialogue between Felienne Hermans and myself over the past month. After a few overdubs (edits), Felienne advised me that it is time to submit the paper to the peer review process.

First, I had to format the paper according to the required standard. There is a document which gives the specifications, but it is also a 'live template' document. I'm not sure exactly what this means so it took me quite a while to get my paper formatted in the style required (Times New Roman 10, two columns, widths etc). In the end, I replaced part of the template's text with my text, which solved most of the problems. By hand, I formatted the title and the author details and pasted these in.

As the paper had originally been written for a different conference which has a different style (Arial 12), the new format shrunk the paper somewhat, enabling me to add a little information. SEMS also requires the references in a different format, so these had to be changed as well. So after no small amount of struggle, I had a version which contained what I wanted it to contain and formatted in the correct style.

I then had to contend with a website which allows one to update submissions to the conference. This took a little time but was fairly straight-forward. The site requires that the submission be in pdf format, so I had to create a pdf from the Word document which I had been editing (more overhead). Final gripe: the site consistently referred to me as "No'Am" Newman; I had to remove the apostrophe in order to achieve "Noam" - and now I have to hope that no one misreads this as 'gnome'.

I don't know how long the peer review process will take, but in the mean time, I will reserve both airplane tickets and hotel room (i.e. book but not pay).

I have also been working on the questionnaire. My supervisor does not like the idea of the Split Questionnaire Design, so I have been examining the questionnaire with a very critical eye to see which questions can be removed without influencing the results too much. The first step was analysing which questions belonged to which factors: it turns out that three of the first five questions were not connected to any factor and could be removed. They are 'good' questions but not necessary.

I then went over the different sections: there were a couple of questions in the 'Priority/Excel' section which didn't contribute anything and a few in the 'user satisfaction' section which were effectively duplicate. So after wielding a very sharp knife, I managed to reduce the entire questionnaire to 45 questions (and this is after adding a question about mother tongue). It shouldn't take more that 15 minutes for someone to complete the questionnaire, so it seems that the entire questionnaire will be used instead of the SQM (two 30 item questionnaires). This will be checked.

In a parallel track, people have been looking at the Hebrew version of the questionnaire and flagging parts which aren't sufficiently clear. Unfortunately, some people have taken a very long time (two weeks) to do so, which means that by the time I received their input, the wording of a question or answer had already been changed - or even dropped from the questionnaire.

I am also checking to see whether the average native Russian speaker who works with Priority can understand the Hebrew questionnaire (this is what led to the question about mother tongue). Whilst the Russians tend to have reasonable spoken Hebrew, their level of reading/writing is a different manner. At the worst, I will prepare a rough 'Google translate' version of the questionnaire in Russian and then get someone to improve it. 

Probably one can make jokes about the concept of 'user satisfaction' in Russian, although of course, such jokes would be thirty years too late (in those days, one had to be satisfied with what the party supplied, with no option of being dissatisfied). 'Learning style' would also be an interesting concept to have measured in those days....

I obtained a list of companies which rent premises in the industrial area where I normally work; I then sent a letter to them asking if anyone uses Priority. One company (with which I am not familiar) replied and I am trying to arrange an initial interview. This is a tedious business as my correspondent seems to be very suspicious. Hopefully I will be able to conduct the interview in the next few days. This is still part of the pilot process and not final research. 

If things go well, then I will ask to distribute the full questionnaire as it now stands; I will be interested in meta-data - how long it took to complete the questionnaire, whether there are still questions which are not clear and whether there are missing options - but this time I will be more interested in the answers themselves. I will also be checking the 'company' questionnaire.

Split questionnaire design

I wrote about finding a paper yesterday which describes the split questionnaire design; there were several papers which I could have chosen but the one that I chose seemed to be fairly representative and understandable. Yesterday I read only the opening page; my eyes glazed over when the paper started discussing heavy statistical analyses.

Today I continued reading the paper: I skipped the theoretical introduction and moved on to the actual experiment which the authors performed. Serendipity strikes its head: they used a questionnaire consisting of 65 questions grouped into 9 blocks; I had 68 questions grouped into 9 blocks (or sections, as I called them). There are two possible algorithms for splitting the questionnaire: 'between block' designs and 'within block' designs.

As I understand the above, I have chosen a 'between block' design: each questionnaire contains complete blocks. A 'within block' design means that each questionnaire contains some questions from each block. As it happens, I was discussing this with the occupational psychologist this morning (prior to reading the paper): she suggested that I use what the authors call the 'within block' design. 

I prefer the 'between block' design as I achieve a higher degree of accuracy for each block: if there are eight questions in a block and each question has five answers, then I can expect a total ranging between 8 and 40. If there are only four questions, then the total can range between 4 and 20, which is obviously a 50% reduction in accuracy. If there is a block with only three questions (and I have such a block), then reducing the number of questions will seriously damage the accuracy.

On the other hand, the authors write: feelings of boredom [may] primarily [be] caused by repetition of the relatively similar questions within blocks that measure similar constructs. Boredom occurs less in the within-block SQD because there are less of these similar questions with each block.

Again, prior to reading the paper, I had become aware of something similar to this problem. I had assigned to one questionnaire the blocks about spreadsheet efficacy and learning style, and to the other, blocks about training, ownership and satisfaction. This was done very much ad hoc late last night but afterwards I began to have misgivings: one questionnaire has blocks which are strongly connected with Priority and the other has questions which are totally unconnected. Thus I have decided to revise the questionnaires so that one has the training, ownership and learning style blocks whereas the other has efficacy and satisfaction. I am also going to standardise the order of the blocks within the questionnaire, for my own benefit.

I did not see any mention in the paper of 'compulsory' (common to all) and 'optional' blocks within the questionnaire so this seems to be my personal contribution. 

---

My understanding has deepened after having read a few more papers on SQD. What I was calling 'compulsory blocks' are normally named 'core components' whereas the 'optional blocks' are non-core components. Apparently, a more normal design is that there exists one questionnaire which is composed of the core components and all the non-core components; each respondent is directed to answer the core components along with randomly assigned non-core components. My twist is to create two questionnaires, each consisting of core and non-core components, where the respondent has to answer all the questions. 

One might say that this will lead to problems when storing the data and then analysing them, but as I will be writing a dedicated program for storing the results and analysing them (or at least, outputting data which will be analysed by a statistical package), I'm not worried about this. I have a high level of database self-efficacy!

Reinventing the wheel

There's nothing like reinventing the wheel to make one feel foolish. On the other hand, to independently hit on an idea should be a sign of intelligence. I am referring to my previous blog when I realised that in order to get responses to all the questions in my research questionnaire, I should divide it into two (or three, or four) separate questionnaires and give each person one of those questionnaires. 

I have discovered that this technique is called 'split questionnaire design' and there are plenty of papers available on Google Scholar which discuss it. Most of them seem very heavy on the statistics, which is something that I can leave for my supervisor. I found one interesting paper (by Adigüzel and Wedel) entitled "split questionnaire design for massive surveys", which seems to contain everything that I need.

I notice that the abstract finishes "... as a result of reduced respondent burden, the quality of data using split questionnaire design improves". Amen.

Removing the blinkers (Research questionnaire 6)

I woke up this morning at 4:30am - not in a cold sweat, but with two pressing issues on my mind. One is concerned with my daily job, which need not concern us here, and one is concerned with the pilot study for my doctoral research.

I handed out six questionnaires to people to be reviewed; most were not returned promptly and I had to remind the people. One of them is now in Canada for a week (she apparently answered the questionnaire instead of reviewing it) so I shall have to forget her, and another has yet to respond. But from the few responses which I did get, one thing is very clear: the questionnaire is too long. I see now that I wrote about this before.

For an hour, I twisted in bed, thinking about how I could reduce the number of questions in the questionnaire without affecting its integrity - this is similar to how to pour a quart into a pint pot. I reached no conclusions. After I got up, I took the dog for her morning walk, and on the way, the answer (or at least, an answer) popped into my head. My thinking, as always, was blinkered, and once I removed those blinkers, I could see the solution. As always, this seems obvious in retrospect, but I've never seen this technique used in practice (i.e. in all the research papers which I read).

Create two questionnaires! 

There are questions which have to be in both questionnaires, such as age, etc, as well as 'the dependent variable', the extent of spreadsheet usage with data exported from Priority. But not everyone need answer other sections of the questionnaire: for example, half of the respondents can answer about satisfaction with Priority whereas the other half can answer about cognitive style. As a result, different questions/sections will have a different number of responses, but this shouldn't present a statistical problem as long as there are over 30 answers per question.

I have written to my supervisor asking about this as I feel that this is a critical issue and I don't want to continue without advise. I will also look in the research book that I bought at his suggestion in the summer. I would try and find references to this technique but I don't know what to look for (this frequently seems to be a problem).

Obligatory science fiction reference: the solution above brings to mind the third section of Isaac Asimov's "The Gods themselves". Why should I be satisfied with two questionnaires when maybe I need three or more? My objective is to have at most 40 questions in the questionnaire, and if this means that each respondent will answer one of two, three or four questionnaires, then so be it. There will be no problem as long as the program which records the responses knows which version is being answered.

Research questionnaire (5)

The version of the questionnaire which I have sent to six reviewers consists of 68 questions in nine sections:

• Priority usage – 5 questions
• User training – 4 questions
• User ownership – 3 questions
• User satisfaction – 8 questions
• Learning style – 11 questions
• Spreadsheet competency – 14 questions
• Spreadsheet efficacy – 8 questions
• Spreadsheets/Priority – 11 questions
• Personal details – 4 questions

The data (questions) are stored in a hierarchy: options belong to questions, questions belong to sections, sections are connected to versions along with their display order. Thus I can easily create a new version of the questionnaire which eliminates a section or two. I can also change the order of the sections without changing the questions asked per section.

I may well have to do this as the feedback which I have received so far is that the questionnaire is too long. The respondent also did not understand the point of the questions about learning style. As the the spreadsheet/Priority section is of very high importance, I will probably change its position so that it comes after user ownership.

If the other reviewers are in agreement about the length of the questionnaire, then I have four options:

1. Remove sections
2. Keep all of the sections but remove superfluous questions
3. Remove questions from sections and delete sections from the version
4. Do nothing

There are definitely some superfluous questions in the spreadsheet competency section, thus those could be removed without compromising the final results. I don't want to cut the number of questions per section to below six (for those where it is above six) as I lose accuracy by doing so. I don't want to remove sections as each section belongs to a hypothesis in my research, so removing sections would be reducing the breadth of my research. If I had to make a choice, then spreadsheet efficacy would be the first section to go.

I expect to get all the responses back by the end of the week so that I can discuss them with the occupational psychologist. I will then have to make a decision as to what the next version of the pilot questionnaire should contain, then send the new questionnaire to both the original reviewers and also to a few more people. This process will have to be repeated as many times as needed until I am convinced that I have a suitable questionnaire.

Then I will have to send it to a company in order to get real results.

Less pleasant memories from early 1975

The second incident which has remained in memory from early 1975 definitely happened during the first week of the second term. During the winter term, I had begun accompanying my lunch with half a pint of cider; I was feeling slightly left out during lunch with my classmates. At the Christmas party held at the end of the previous term, I had supplemented my cider along with three shots of vodka and pineapple (about the only other alcoholic drink whose taste I liked) which had been forced upon me. I left the student union bar in the Elephant and Castle (south London) feeling rather woozy; by the time I got home to Hampstead (via the tube), I was feeling bad enough to bring up a little (but only a little) vomit.

So: first week, second term. At lunch, I ordered my 'traditional' half a pint of cider, had a sip - and promptly fell underneath the table with strong stomach pains. I didn't drink any more cider that day and haven't had an alcoholic drink since (not that I miss it at all). I went to the doctor who prescribed me a barbiturate to calm my stomach. Unfortunately, the barbiturates gave me strong headaches, so the doctor then prescribed another drug (I think this was Distalgesic) which took care of the headaches ... but gave me stomach pains. So I took more barbiturates and then took more distalgesic ... and by the end of the week, I was walking around in a complete haze, like a zombie. 

In a moment of lucidity, I realised what was happening and so took the remaining barbiturates back to the pharmacist so that he could destroy them (it never occurred to me to flush them down the toilet). Presumably I then spent a few days 'drying out'. This incident led to multiple appointments over the next few years in an attempt to discover what was wrong with my stomach. I had one barium meal and in 1977 I had an endoscopy (which at the time was a relatively new procedure). The diagnosis was an inflamed area of the duodenum; I was given (one at a time) several new drugs which didn't really help.

The endoscopy is a story in itself: I had been told not to eat the day before. I walked from where I lived to the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, which would have been about a mile and a half. I was given 10 mg of Valium which completely knocked me out and then the procedure took place. I woke up at about 4pm and realised that I had a tube going up one nostril and from there into the stomach. A nurse removed the tube then told me that I was free to go home. I couldn't believe what she said as I was barely awake. "Call a taxi", she said. I had never ridden in a taxi in my life and quite possibly didn't even have any money with me. So like the idiot that I was in those days, I decided to walk home.

I got to the top of Hampstead High Street, near the tube station, which would have been about half the way home, when I collapsed in the middle of the street. Straightaway, a passerby came to me, asked what was wrong and stopped a passing car. The driver took me home, we knocked on the door, someone came and took me in, took me to my room, possibly helped me undress ... and then I slept for another day. This also meant that I hadn't eaten for two days so I was ravenous when I awoke.

Fortunately things have changed. I have had a few endoscopies since then and I am pleased to say that the procedures are better. I had a colonoscopy last year and the dosage of relaxant was so low that I was awake during the procedure (although I couldn't feel anything). My wife drove me home (well, I could hardly walk home from Jerusalem, even without the relaxant).

Stomach pains of one kind or another accompanied me for at least twenty years. As a result of the most recent endoscopy (which was maybe ten years ago), I was diagnosed with a hiatus hernia along with reflux gastritis; since then I take a daily dose of omeprazole and (along with a suitable diet) haven't had any stomach pain since. Omeprazole was only invented in 1979 and became available several years after, so it wasn't around when I needed it the most.

I don't recall suffering from headaches during my pre-Israel years, apart from the above episode, although they had definitely become part of my life in the late 1980s, probably as a result of stress. Unfortunately, I still suffer from them, although much less in the past few years.

[SO: 3721; 3,15,36
MPP: 574; 1,2,6]

Memories of Richard and Linda Thompson from 40 years ago

In the past few days, with thanks to my new wonder shoes, I've managed to increase the distance that I walk in the evening. Yesterday I completed 6km - and that was on a Friday night, when I frequently feel bloated from dinner. Of course, the further I walk, the longer it takes: yesterday took 55 minutes. Walking such distances is dependent on three factors (that I can think of right now, there are probably more): good shoes, stamina and an occupied brain.

On some walks, I solve programming problems and on others, I think about my doctoral studies (for example, the other night I was thinking about the pilot study). When I was working on the literature review during October, I would actively think about everything which I had read and written that day and what needed to be improved. During the 'old' days of the MBA, I would 'revise' whilst walking. This is valuable thinking time, when I am not distracted by anything, and I'm sure that it's one of the contributing reasons to the comparatively fast pace of my doctorate.

Of course, all the time I'm listening to music - or rather, there is music playing in the earphones that I wear. All of the songs are familiar to me but recently I added about ten more hours of music which I have listened to properly in the past years: Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush, Randy Newman and Richard Thompson.

Which brings us neatly to memories of 40 years ago: January 1975. I was starting my second term of the first year at university and there are two series of extra-curricular events which have stayed in my mind and have had no small importance of my life. At the beginning of this term, I started helping out with the university newspaper, which came out once a fortnight. At first I helped collate the papers but then I started writing. As I recall, my first review was about an exhibition of painting which I saw in the Tate Gallery by Paul Klee.

An added bonus for writing these reviews was that I was able to hear new music (cue Hatfield and the North) and go to concerts for free. I have just proved to myself that memory can be elastic as an event which I thought took place in February 1975 actually took place two months later, but I'm going to treat it as if it took place when I thought it did.

This event is concerned with Richard Thompson, with his then wife, Linda. I have written before about purchasing his first solo album, 'Henry the Human Fly'. In February 1975, I bought his third (and their second) album, 'Hokey Pokey' from a short lived record shop in West Hampstead. At the time, I thought that this record was the bees' knees as it was filled with good songs and good arrangements, but later I revised my opinion in favour of the starker albums which came directly before and after HP.

For some reason, I had missed the preceding record, 'I want to see the bright lights tonight'. The story is that it had been recorded in 1973 but wasn't released because of the Yom Kippur war which led to an oil shortage which led to problems manufacturing records. It was finally released some time in 1974 when I wasn't in Britain, but strangely I didn't buy it when I came home. Maybe it wasn't in the shops. As it happens, I have a memory of visiting Bath University around May/June 1973 with a schoolfriend and hearing the title song on the radio, so it was 'in the can' for some time before being released.

Back to the story at hand. On 25 April 1975 (I thought that this was earlier), R&L had a 'coming out' concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in the South Bank complex. I was able to score free tickets to this (as I was reviewing it) and took my girlfriend, G, who wasn't too aware of the Thompsons. On the steps outside the hall there were people selling what I took to be programmes but were in fact copies of a new music magazine called 'Licorice'; I bought one and greatly enjoyed reading it.

The first half of the concert was Richard and Linda acoustic. Someone sent me years ago either a cassette of this  (which I must dig out and digitise) or a cd. I remember thinking during 'Valerio' how Richard was an excellent electric guitarist and it wasn't fair that he was also an excellent acoustic guitarist - leave some room for someone else!

The 'electric' second half, with John Kirkpatrick (accordion) and the ace rhythm section of Daves Pegg (bass) and Mattacks (drums) was as good as the first half; the strange combination of electric guitar and accordion sounded as if it were creating a new kind of soul music.

My records show that the next day I went out and bought a copy of 'I want to see the bright lights tonight'. I discovered shortly afterwards that G had done exactly the same thing. I have a memory of staying overnight at her house once and playing the record the next morning. They had an acoustic guitar (with which I accompanied some of the songs) and a piano, which one of G's younger sisters was learning to play. I wonder whether I tried teaching her one of the songs.

Whilst listening to the songs from IWTSTBLT last night, I wondered whether G updated her vinyl copy to CD, whether she ever listens to it and whether she thinks of me when doing so. I certainly think of her when listening to them.

Painting with numbers

I discovered the website of Randall Bolten a few weeks ago; he wrote a book entitled 'Painting with numbers' and here I will present some of the promotional material for it ....

Bolten presents a book for all who communicate with numbers. "Painting with Numbers: Presenting Financials and Other Numbers So People Will Understand You"will help you to communicate financials and other numbers clearly, understandably, concisely, and – most of all – effectively.

Like any communication skill, how well you can present numbers has a huge effect on how well your audience understands you. When presenting numbers, you are sending signals to your audience about your intelligence, professionalism, and respect for your audience.

You should read Painting with Numbers if you:

• Communicate with numbers as a central part of your job, as an accountant or other finance professional 
• Present numbers as part of your function as a lawyer, investor, HR professional, fundraiser, etc. 
• Work in a fiscal management, taxation, healthcare and other areas of public policy where presenting and understanding numbers are critical 
• Are pursuing a degree in business, engineering or other career where communicating with numbers is critical 
• Read, listen to, and make decisions based on numbers presented to you Communicate with numbers only occasionally, but when that skill is needed, the stakes are very high for you 

Many books have been written about writing and speaking, such as Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style and Lynn Truss’ Eats, Shoots & Leaves. But "Painting with Numbers" is the first book about communicating with numbers.

The other day I saw this graph in the newspaper

I sent the graph to Mr Bolten along with the following message: The enclosed graphic was displayed in an Israeli newspaper this morning which discusses how Israelis use the internet. What caught my eye was the fact that there is absolutely no relationship between the length of the histogram bars and the percentage which they are displaying. The bars from top to bottom read

• Met partners on the internet – 32%
• Members of family groups in WhatsApp – 70%
• Visit a doctor after reading about their medical problem on internet – 56%
• Watch tv series and films via the internet – 63%
• Listen to music on the net – 80%

He replied: Many thanks for your interesting example! (And thanks for the translation – my Hebrew is ridiculously rusty, and impossible without the vowels.) 

I spent a few minutes myself trying to guess what might have gone wrong with the graph, and I could identify no errors or transpositions that might explain things. I even speculated that the 80%/70%/63%/56%/32% relationship might be explained by the space remaining to the right of the bars, since Hebrew reads right-to-left, but that didn’t work, either. 

The only explanation I could come up with was that the length of the bars was determined by the length of the captions – note that the type size is the same for all five captions, and the blank space on either side of the numbers seems to be about the same in each bar. In other words, this “graph” was not produced in Excel or any other graphing package – it was nothing more than artwork created to make it look like a graph. (This is an interesting variation on Deadly Sin #2, which you will find in the attached “The Deadly Sins of Quantation,” a one-page handout that is marketing collateral for my book, Painting with Numbers.) 

If you ever do find out how & why this graph was generated, please let me know.  It is one of the worst examples of numbers presentation I’ve ever seen, and I may want to write a post about it. 

Green lighting the pilot study

After completing the literature review for my doctoral thesis, I wrote a new document called the literature synthesis. It wasn't particularly clear what was needed for this stage, so I had a Skype conversation with my supervisor to clarify matters. I understood that the synthesis should basically contain the conclusions from the literature review. As I had already included a fair number of conclusions in the review, I withdrew them from this document and moved them to the synthesis. I then added material about aims, objectives and hypotheses: this material was taken almost directly from the research proposal although it was updated whenever necessary. Finally I added two pages describing the design of the pilot study. This new material was sent to my supervisor about a week and a half ago, and he gave his approval on Monday (the delay was due to holidays).

So now I am starting with my pilot study. This will have two stages: a preparatory stage and an exploratory stage. This is what I wrote about the preparatory stage:

Factors which have to be checked with regard to the questionnaire are:

• Length: is the questionnaire too long?
• Flow: do the several sections which comprise the questionnaire fit together?
• Understandability: are the questions ambiguous?
• Answers: have all the possible options been included?

As the research itself will be taking place in Israel, the questionnaire has to be translated into Hebrew. This translation will be checked to ensure that it is both grammatically correct and also faithful to the original. The wording may have to be changed in order to enhance the understandability.

This preparatory stage will actually be divided into two: I have given the questionnaire to six people (two psychologists, two ERP users from my company, one ERP user from another company and one university lecturer) for criticism; on the basis of their input, I will update the questionnaire and distribute it to a wider population. In both cases, the people receiving the questionnaire are requested to criticise it and not to answer it.

Assuming that the questionnaire's format is finalised after the second round of the preparatory stage, I will then distribute the questionnaire to users of a company which uses Priority (I have to choose a company and also obtain their permission). This is the exploratory phase, and the respondents will be requested to answer the questionnaire. This is an important stage as it tests the questionnaire on a real population. The answers are also important for it may be that questions will have to be removed: there's no point in having a question which asks for an opinion if everyone answers in the same manner. The results of this phase may be used as part of the final research, but this depends on how many changes are made to the questionnaire after the first field test. It may be necessary to run a second field test if major changes are made, but the whole idea of the two preparatory tests is to freeze the questionnaire's format before it goes out into the field.

I imagine that the pilot study should take about five-six weeks to complete. Once this is done, I can write up the results of the pilot study and submit everything which I have written since the research proposal was accepted to the research committee. As my textbook (IBR2) states,

The DBA Research Committee critically evaluates the literature review submission and decides whether or not it is of an acceptable standard to justify progression to the final stage.
The Committee looks for evidence that all current relevant literature has been identified, read, critically reviewed and synthesised to act as a basis for the development of the research aims and objectives. The Committee also looks for evidence that the proposed research methodology has been developed directly from this synthesis. The literature review submission must demonstrate a clear progression from literature base to current research. The student has to use the literature review submission to demonstrate that the current research a) has been logically and systematically developed from the existing knowledge (literature) base and b) will contribute directly to that knowledge base.

I can devote some time, while the pilot study is running, to integrating the various sections that I have written in order to make a more coherent document (not that much work should be needed). I think that the introduction needs to be improved. This submission will actually be the first half of the final thesis so it is important that it be written well - although of course, I will be able to edit the text before the final thesis is submitted.

This is an important milestone! Next time I'll write about the questionnaire itself.