Don't Blame Microsoft

I recently saw a complaint where someone using PowerPoint wanted to know why you couldn't see your presentation on the projector screen and your notes on your laptop at the same time.

Er...

In the forum someone responded that it was possible but hardware was probably why they couldn't do it (however, they didn't say precisely where the functionality was).

Er...

One of the reasons that Microsoft created the Ribbon (instead of toolbars and menus) from Office 2007 is that that the majority of requests for new functionality in all Office products was for stuff that was already there, but not known.  In these Excel forums I visit there is loads of proof that this is the case; people asking for things which can be done easily, and without resorting to programming a solution in Visual Basic.  There is loads of stuff in Office that "experts" (like I think I am) are unaware of. Help forums continually annoy me by showing up my ignorance about Office. And from the postings and replies I know I'm not alone.

The reason that Excel and the rest of the Office suite is probably the most popular business application in the world is because Microsoft have been very good at creating features and functionality that meet the needs of both basic and "power" users. If I want to do something "new" these days, I assume someone at Microsoft was tasked with addressing it probablyfive years ago, and it is there "somewhere". I try to resist the temptation to click Alt-F11 to get to the code editor and bang away at the keyboard, and instead look first at the toolbar/menu/ribbon. It's amazing what you can learn from this.

By the way, to get to see the presentation and notes at the same time, go to "Slide Show/ Set Up Show (2003)", or "Slide Show/ Set Up Slide Show (2007)" which also has some other useful functions, such as Presenter View. The functionality has been around for a long time.

A complaint is that in Presenter View in 2003 you can't see the Notes, which is a pain. You have to uncheck the Presenter View box and select the second display for the presentation, then you can see both, but you lose some Presenter View functionality. In 2007. Presenter View works fine with Notes - testimony that Microsoft at some stage picked up on this pain.

Little Jack Horner

Making a Habit of Quick Thinking 
In the rush to get things done, it's tempting  to cut corners, and it's usually the thinking and the planning that gets sacrificed.  But we can also spend too much time corner-making - exploring ideas and thinking about the complexities as a substitute for getting anything started.


I find myself corner-making all the time, probing a mix of issues that have some bearing on an idea, and contemplating circumstances that will probably never happen.
But I go there anyway, "just in case".


Is it possible to develop the quick-thinking habit?  I read somewhere that habits are one of the greatest forces of nature, so that most of what we do is automatic.  And these are not just the trivial things like cleaning your teeth.  For example, in my work I need to develop complex business models, and I automatically build them expecting others to need to use them to examine 100s or 1000s of scenarios.  Even though the methods are in our best practice guide I generally do this without thinking - I know the techniques to use, and so it's become a habit.


My suggestions for developing a quick thinking habit are:

• Do some thinking every day.   Thinking is an action, so whether your on the bus, in a queue, driving, or on the "throne", switch off the MP3 player and instead fill your mind with new challenges.
• Put that thinking into action.  OK, maybe not everything.  But form the habit of doing as well as thinking.
• Leave a few problems unsolved.  This is the tricky one.  We're usually want to solve everything that we've identified as a problem, but I usually find that the bigger and more significant problems are the ones that I've not imagined (yet).  You can always think about a solution on the next trip to the loo.  But don't let an unsolved problem prevent you from making a start.
• Accept that you'll make mistakes.  Even when I've thought through things, I still make mistakes.  So accept that and get on with it.

The Sanity Of Crowds

Why Groupon Might Need to Discount Itself

I've been wondering whether social networking and business collaboration are coming together.  Sites like Facebook and eBay benefit from community and the power of crowds.  But is there any community in Groupon?  There are two aspects that make me wonder if Groupon will ever become a verb, like Facebook, Google and eBay.

Where is the Group in Groupon?

I haven't any emotional association with any other buyers.  I'm not in competition with them, and clubbing together to get a group rate is not what Groupon is about.  I'm only interested because there's a discount.

But even then, the business model is based not on the buyers of services, but on the willingness of merchants to sell their products and services at up to 80% discount.  Since the  money the buyer pays is split 50/50 or thereabouts, sellers are virtually giving their stuff away.  They either have massive margins, or more likely they are hoping to generate more revenue from the same person buying repeatedly at normal rates.

The idea of Groupon is cool.  Who wouldn't want a meal for four at a classy restaurant with wine thrown in for £25.  But if the restaurant is losing say £75 on the deal, they have to make the same people come back and spend maybe £150-£200 to break even.  That's a high price to pay for a new customer.  It would be interesting to know how many bargain-hunters come back and buy again. (BTW, I haven't bought anything at all so far).

If buyers don't come back, then merchants will not invest in same idea again.  To grow Groupon will need to keep adding first-time merchants - newbies who are attracted by the idea of fast business growth but don't know whether the strategy works or not.  Isn't that how Ponzi schemes work?

Can Groupon maintain it's uniqueness?

Because there's no community, there's no loyalty.  For Facebook to be unseated, a new and better idea has to emerge that will shift hundreds of millions of people, because the connectedness is what is valuable.

So Groupon can be replicated, and co-exist with other similar services.  There is nothing stopping me from using Groupon for my beauty treatments, and some other coupon seller for my leisure activities.  In fact, I can see Facebook, eBay, Amazon and other services that have an enormous, loyal followship adding coupons to give them new revenue streams, without making a merchant cut their costs so massively.  The existing connectedness of people who "Like" a bargain will create a viral sales channel.

Whilst I'm not about to delete me Groupon account (hey, I love a bargain), I can't see myself every paying full price for my fish pedicure, now that I know I could get it for a fraction by waiting.

Start At The Finish Line

Why starting at the end is the way to go
When I have to visit a client I find their postcode on their website, copy that to Google Maps to have a look at the building, and when I'm sure I've got the right place I click on "Directions" to find the journey from wherever I happen to be.  Pretty much every time I haven't done that, I end up arriving a bit uncertain and peering through my bifocals at an array of buildings, looking for a sign.  The UK is notorious for not displaying building numbers or even street names, and asking passers-by can be a bit of a gamble.

Contrast that with a software development project.  One of my colleagues used to say to me the equivalent of: "I wouldn't start from here" pretty much every time I asked about adapting a model.  There are not many projects that need to start from Somewhere Else (which is an area of of greenbelt known to developers as The Blank Sheet Of Paper).  If that were the case, we wouldn't have developed so many tools and techniques that enable "re-usability" for software.


Regardless of where you start on a project, you must know where you're headed.
This isn't the same as the solution, by the way.  In most instances, we don't know at the start of project everything we want to know at the end.  No.  In the case of a modelling project, the secret is knowing what the result needs to look like to give the decision-maker a clear understanding of the solution to their problem.


For example, if they are asking "can I reduce the number of people used in this process without affecting service levels", then the model needs to generate service level information, resources used, staff and equipment utilisation and so on.


This also helps to determine what you don't need, for example you probably needn't bother including equipment energy consumption.  But you can see that absenteeism might be important, particularly if their is a risk of it rising with the increased workload.  Cue: a discussion about HR issues.


I think many of are inclined to include more detail than we really need to solve a problem.  My rule is: "If in doubt, chuck it out!".

Ad Nonsense

Why did I give you the option to go away?
A week or so ago I clicked the "monetise" button on the design view of this blog, and after a bit of a sign-up process, I'd given myself the option to make £hundreds from people clicking on ads.  Yeah, right!

I had a bit of an awakening a few days ago when I realised I'd just provided a very easy mechanism for readers to stop reading what I'd written and spend their time somewhere else.  Stupid of me, I know, but I wasn't thinking.

Prison Break

Last week I had the experience of visiting a Category A prison. For me, getting in was a lot harder than getting out.  I suspect it is the other way round for the actual residents.

I was there at the invitation of one of the directors to share with their senior team approaches to service re-design, in order to increase efficiency and effectiveness; after all, they along with the whole of the public sector will have to do more with less.  How do you start to deal with something as complex as the regime of a prison?  How will you know that you've really improved - working smarter, not just harder?

As you'd expect, the way that things are done in this particular environment is highly prescriptive - very process-driven, and this is one place you can start.

There are four-stages to improvement:

1. Find out how things are done.  What do people think is the current process?  You can get more than one view here, they're probably all right.  You'd imagine that there would be volumes of procedure documents, but it's not guaranteed that what's written is how things are actually done.  In my view it's best to talk to people, although in areas where performance is being measured you may get a formal answer rather than what is actually done, so some insight is needed.
2. Find out how well things are done.  This isn't as hard as it sounds, because public sector services have for a long time been required to provide information on performance.  But once again, you may need to talk as there is often some cynicism surrounding published performance measures.
3. Decide how well things could be done.  Setting realistic and measurable targets for improvement provides motivation for all types of change.  SMART objectives are as valuable in an organisational context as they are in a personal context: Specific; Measurable; Attainable; Relevant ;Time-bound
4. Develop options for change that will improve. Now whilst this sounds blindingly obvious, it is the hardest step.  You need to come up with ideas, convert those in a modified process, and then find a way of proving that the modified process is better and does not have undesirable side-effects.  This is where is business model is so important.

Only a business model enables them to compare the performance of the new process with the current one and measure "the size of the prize".  It's the prize that provides the business incentive to make the change.  In a prison environment, there will be few areas where they can experiment with a process in the real world; a model enables them to examine hundreds of scenarios and determine the specific change that delivers the best outcome whilst checking that unexpected and undesirable impacts are avoided.  Time to lock in those benefits.

There's No Alternative

In the run up to the Alternative Vote (AV) referendum, it became clear that AV was never going to happen. Any modelling that I was doing was becoming superfluous.

Only the Liberal Democrats kept believing in AV, but the system was just too flawed.  It made no sense to me and millions of others that some people would get to vote more than once.  In fact those people with more than one vote were the ones whose first preferences would be for a minority party.  AV is dead, and with it any chance of an alternative to First Past The Post.

I don't know why Labour supported it at all.  Unless it was to start sidling up to the LDs.  The LDs got "a kicking" from the public in the May elections.  I wonder if they are dead in the water and whether they can ever regain any credibility.

For example, why would the Conservatives compromise with them on anything from now on?  The LD MPs have sold their souls, and the Tories can assume they will agree to anything just to hang onto power.  The LDs even have to stand up in parliament and support government policies that they were adamantly against during the 2010 election campaign.

Good grief we're in a strange situation - LDs have a voice but no real influence, and yet they help push through disastrous policies that affect millions us.  They are a loose cannon.  Someone please take away their balls.

Predictions from Preferences

The way that the Alternative Voting system works is easy to describe but quite difficult to express in logical terms.  One of the trickiest aspects is deciding how the losing party's votes will be distributed to the other candidates.  I've seen some other posts where the 2010 election was "re-run" using AV system, but no detail was provided explaining the assumptions made.

So how should I do it?  Every voter is different, so voter A who voted for Labour might express Lib Dem as their second preference and Conservative as their third, whereas voter B might express Conservative as their second preference, and BNP as their third (a significant shift to the right, I would say!).

My suggested approach is to assume, for each party, their second preference parties only, and the mix.  When a party is eliminated under AV, these votes are transferred to the second preference parties in a pre-set distribution (another assumption needed for that), and from then on those votes "belong" to that party and inherit their second preferences.  In this way I only need to assume the second preferences and the mix.

It might not be too hard to make an educated guess for the second preference parties, but the mix will be a wild guess.  As an example, imagine the following votes in a seat:

Imagine the 100 UKIP voters express their second preferences as follows: 70 to Conservative, 30 to Labour.  The votes become after AV Round 1:

Finally, imagine Labour Party voters prefer Lib Dems to Conservatives in the ratio 70/30.  The 30 votes transferred from UKIP to Labour inherit this preference too, so the second and final round becomes:

So the Lib Dems win under AV, compared with the Conservatives under First Past The Post.



I shall finish the model and we'll see what the election might have been.

Swings and Roundabouts

The 2011 Barnsley Central by-election saw Lib Dem voters desert their party, with their count collapsing by 75%, to just 1,102 - enough to cause panic but hardly enough to set of an intruder alarm.  Having previously split their votes 50/50 with the Conservatives, they slumped to sixth behind Labour, UKIP , the Conservatives, the BNP and an independent candidate.  They even managed to help Labour increase their majority AND increase their share of votes from 47% to 61%.  Whatever the Lib Dems are doing, the Alternative Vote system won't help if allegiances change like this.

I thought I'd put my AV model on hold for a moment whilst I look at a new analysis - second places.  First of all, have a look at this.

This chart looks at how the share of the vote for the winning party was distributed in the 2010 election.  So about 20 seats were won with between 35% and 40% of the vote.  But what happens if you superimpose the share of the vote for second and third place?

There are large overlaps between 3rd and 2nd place votes shares, and between 2nd and 3rd.  For example, in Dorset Mid and Poole North, the Lid Dems won the seat with 45.1% of the vote, and the Conservatives came 2nd with 44.5%.  But in Norwich South the Lib Dems won with just 29.4% of the vote.

In Hamspead and Kilburn, possible the most "even" of the seats, Labour, Conservatives and Lib Dems shared around 97% of the vote between them almost equally.

I get the sense that a collapse of Lib Dem votes of even a fraction of what was witnessed in Barnsley, would change the landscape considerably.  But how?

In Barnsley, there was a swing from Lib Dem to Labour of 13.3%, and from Conservatives to Labour 11.3%.  There were also swings between Lib Dems and UKIP, and probably between Lib Dem and Conservatives although the "maths of swing" doesn't allow it.  In reality, the Lib Dem voters switched to several different parties.  I think that the coalition the Lib Dems are in is a dizzy roundabout that they wish they could get off.  I think they will get thrown off.

In a few weeks time, the Scottish devolved parliamentary elections will be held.  This could be a real litmus test for the Lib Dems and in fact the Conservatives as this is similar to a general election.  Members are elected using a First Past The Post system (73 constituencies)  plus a form of Proportional Representation (56 regional members).  At the moment the Lib Dems and Conservatives hold 17 constituency seats and 20 regional seats.  As they are now in coalition with one another, they could think about coordinating with each other to avoid splitting their votes.  But I don't think this will happen.  Lib Dem supporters already have endured the uncomfortable spectacle of their MPs compromising their beliefs (aka. reneging on manifesto promises) and of their leader actually defending Conservative party policy in parliament.  I think Lib Dem voters will progress from giving them a kicking, to inflicting a bloody nose.

Fun-Size Elections

A fierce debate about the UK’s general election voting system is underway in the media. 

I wonder whether it's possible to produce a meaningful model using historic election results and assumptions about how people might select their 2nd and 3rd preferences, to add some analytical evidence to the debate.

I’m still working on the model.  If and when I finish it (I have to do this in the evening, you know) I’ll post my observations.

Before I look at some numbers that could affect an election result, here's a bit of fun from the 2010 election data...

1.        No one took the Kevin Phillips Bong prize by polling no votes at all (by the way, I saw this sketch live at the Drury Lane Theatre in London in the 1970s)

2.        Parties I’ve enjoyed spotting include:

a.        Animals Count, which is a new use for them which will be needed if AV is brought in

b.       The Bus-Pass Elvis Party, who clearly believe he’s alive and living in Kettering

c.        Get Snouts Out Of The Trough, possibly a porcine reference to the expenses scandal?

d.        I’ve always expected “None Of The Above” to appear on the ballot at some stage, but the closest I’ve seen is the No Candidate Deserves My Vote party, which ironically polled 327 in Stevenage

e.        Strangely, the Go Mad And Vote For Yourself Party struck a chord with 233 voters in Dorset South who didn’t realise they were voting for someone other than themselves

f.        The Reduce Tax on Beer Party is clearly the organisation most happy to declare its self-interest

g.       I can’t ignore the Monster Raving Loony Party, who continue to field multiple candidates, and as a result appear in my list of “large parties”

h.       Finally, there’s the wonderfully named Fancy Dress Party who probably have no policies at all but always look good

Anyway, down to the model.  Here’s some of the current output using data from the May 2010 election results.  It shows that in my home constituency of Birmingham Edgbaston, Labour got elected with just over 40% of the vote using the “First Past The Post” (FPTP) system.  Under the “Alternative Voting” (AV) system, the Christian Party’s 127 votes are split according to each voter’s 2^nd preferences.  All other voters’ ballots are amended to remove this Party if they’ve been selected.   This re-assignment of votes goes on until one party emerges with 50% or more of the votes.  You can see that even if all the “smaller” parties’ votes were transferred to Labour this way, they would still not reach 50%.  Eventually, in Birmingham Edgbaston, it’ll be Lib Dem voters’ preferences that’ll decide who wins.

You can also see that there are 650 constituencies (seats), contested by 138 parties.  But 80 of these parties only contest one seat, and 125 of them contest fewer than 10.   Here’s some basic analysis of parties which fought 10 or more seats, plus "smaller" parties who actually won.

Party	Seats fought	Seats won	Seats won 50%+ of vote	Votes cast	% of vote in seats fought	% vote Min	% vote Max
Conservative	631	306	126	10,703,654	36.95	4.40	62.80
Labour	631	258	76	8,606,517	29.71	2.25	71.96
Liberal Democrats	631	57	12	6,836,248	23.60	5.03	61.97
UK Independence Party	558	-	-	919,471	3.56	0.65	17.38
British National Party	338	-	-	564,321	3.70	0.40	14.60
Green Party	335	1	-	285,612	1.81	0.51	31.33
English Democrats	107	-	-	64,826	1.28	0.14	5.18
Christian Party	71	-	-	18,622	0.60	0.19	1.77
Scottish National Party***	59	6	-	491,386	19.93	7.66	45.68
Plaid Cymru**	40	3	-	165,394	11.28	2.10	44.33
Trade Unionist and Socialist	37	-	-	11,913	0.80	0.29	2.93
Monster Raving Loony Party	27	-	-	7,510	0.56	0.187	1.77
Socialist Labour Party	23	-	-	7,196	0.77	0.28	1.72
Alliance Party of NI*	18	1	-	42,762	6.35	0.59	37.23
SDLP*	18	3	-	110,970	16.47	1.06	48.58
Christian Peoples Alliance	17	-	-	6,276	0.76	0.11	2.83
National Front	17	-	-	10,784	1.45	0.28	4.87
Sinn Fein*	17	5	2	171,942	26.88	0.75	71.08
UCUNF UUP and CON*	17	-	-	102,361	16.32	3.11	30.44
Democratic Unionist Party*	16	8	-	168,216	28.34	7.58	49.81
Respect	11	-	-	33,251	6.84	0.39	25.12
Scottish Socialist Party***	10	-	-	3,157	0.81	0.51	1.41
Traditional Unionist Voice	10	-	-	23,300	7.26	3.54	16.78
Independents	235	1	-	175,604	1.63	0.10	63.26
Speaker	1	1	-	22,860	47.29	47.29	47.29

* Northern Ireland; **Wales; ***Scotland

These are my observations:

1.   Out of 650 seats, 214 were won with 50%+ of the vote, which means that 436 would have required transferring votes under AV

2.   Even the Speaker didn’t have a majority.  Traditionally, no-one is supposed to stand against the Speaker, but this time  it was contested by 10 other smaller parties/independent candidates.  If these others are objecting to the Speaker personally, perhaps because of his parliamentary expenses record, under AV it is entirely possible that he would not have won his seat

3.   The thinnest margin on the record is in Fermanagh & South Tyrone (Northern Ireland) where Sinn Fein beat an Independent candidate by just 4 votes, each polling 45.52% and 45.51% respectively.  This seat could easily flip but would not affect which of the main parties would rule in the UK– this is because the main parties do not field candidates in Northern Ireland and could not benefit from AV

4.   Northern Ireland, Scotland and to a lesser extent Wales constituencies have seats which have multiple candidates that each polled strongly, implying that these results would also be easily affected by AV

5.   There are also a number of constituencies in England where local issues have either unseated a mainstream party, or have split the vote; these also would be affected by AV.  Examples include:

a.   Birmingham Hall Green; Poplar & Limehouse; and Bethnal Green & Bow, where a Respect candidate probably took votes away from mainstream parties

b.   Barking; and Dagenham & Rainham, where a BNP candidate pushed the Lib Dems into 4^th place

c.   In Norwich South, the three main parties each polled between around 23% &  29%, but the Green Party took over 14%.  So only a small % of Green voters choosing differently could have flipped the seat

d.   In Wyre Forest, the 1-seat Independent Community and Health Concern party polled a stunning 31.7% of the vote, taking 2^nd place.  The same could be said of the 1-seat Independent Save Our Green Belt party who polled over 27% in Castle Point

I'm planning to do some more thinking and then adapt the model to enable an AV system.  

What assumptions should I make?