C.V.

Peter McGraw

I host solo.

Should you buy collision insurance?

This week, Decision Science News’ Dan Goldstein travels to Boulder, and we team up for a joint post (over grilled steak). — Enjoy Most people are happy to have a few types of insurance coverage, typically home, health, and life insurance. However, you can insure most anything. A few of the more peculiar insurance products […]

A different kind of team buying.

A while ago, I wrote about how easy access to information has made consumers more powerful than ever. The rise of Groupon and other daily deal sites demonstrate this nicely. They offer retailers access to thousands of inboxes everyday. In exchange consumers get deep discounts on products and services. In other countries (China especially) there […]

Why should companies do experiments?

It is Startup Week in Boulder, CO. Tomorrow, Thursday 5/19 at 3:00 pm, I am leading a salon style discussion: Why startups should do experiments. I recently visited Dan Ariely, Duke University professor, best selling author, and proponent of experimentation in business (read more). In anticipation of the event, I asked him: Why should companies […]

A killer whale meets Jennifer Grey’s nose: On the generalizability and value of analyzing The New Yorker’s Caption Contest

Co-authored with Phil Fernbach. In last week’s post, we presented an analysis of the captions for The New Yorker’s Cartoon Caption Contest #281 (which Roger Ebert won). We hoped that the analysis would help generate a general set of principles that would be useful to folks who want to win future contests. Our takeaway: Try […]

Do you want to win The New Yorker’s Cartoon Caption Contest?

Do you want to win The New Yorker’s Cartoon Caption Contest? The New Yorker’s Cartoon Caption Contest is the biggest of its kind in the world. Each week, thousands of readers submit potential captions for the cartoon on the last page of the magazine. The winner gets his or her name in The New Yorker […]