Behavioral research

I'm at the O'Reilly's Strata conference in NYC, where a NYU professor shared his research on consumer purchasing behavior. He asserts that 'What people "say" is different from what they actually "do"', so he recommends conducting behavioral studies by measuring what people "do", not what they "say". 

He used camera buying from Amazon as an example, where Zoom is talked about a lot as a feature but has lower impact on purchasing behavior. Whereas Battery Life and Megapixels are talked about less but have higher impact on purchasing behavior. 

Very interesting. 

We often conduct such analysis using surveys in enterprises. To do what he suggests will be more accurate but will cost more... it is much more costly to follow what people "do".

Looking to hire data scientists

We are a global management consulting firm and are looking for data scientists in our team in New York/Washington DC and Gurgaon/Chennai (India). There are full-time and internship (New York) opportunities. There are multiple positions including developing complex models in healthcare, pricing and optimization. If interested, drop me an email at prasoonsharma at gmail dot com.

Position specifications

- Public contributions (projects, plugins, blogs, open source etc.) on MATLAB, SAS, R, SPSS, Stata a plus

- Significant experience in economic and/or scientific programming. Ideally, experience in popular statistical softwares like MATLAB, SAS, R, SPSS, Stata

- Ability to use, analyze and visualize large data sets

- Demonstrated ability for conceptual analytics including translating design considerations into programmed code

- B.A. required, advanced degree preferred (M.A. or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Applied Science, Engineering, Economics, Statistics or similar)

Position responsibilities

Running and developing complex healthcare models; e.g., behavioral simulation. Specific responsibilities include:

- Maintaining and developing model and other analytic assets

- Driving individual and team problem solving regarding model architecture and continued development of model and related analytic assets (e.g., ability to independently develop hypotheses, approaches and solutions to development objectives)

- Conducting research and analyzing existing data sources to derive solutions and analyses for model development including complex, multi-variate analytical analyses

- Overseeing and writing communication materials supporting analytic materials, including communication decks for clients and for client teams

- Rigorously reviewing and testing of all programmed code to ensure accuracy/veracity of toolkit development

- Working with teams to understand, guide and refine client teams requests

- Developing and maintaining work plans etc.