On Sun, 21 Sep 2014 11:09:18 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
.. .
On Sun, 21 Sep 2014 09:39:51 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:


FEA works because the interactions between elements can be
quantitatively characterized. The soft sciences have always lagged
behind the hard ones because they can't fully understand the motives
of and interactions between people. As Niven and Pournelle(?) wrote,
the difference between lawyers and engineers is that the truths a
lawyer seeks actively avoid discovery, and so it is with market
research.
-jsw
-jsw

Having done a fair amount of market research, I don't think that's
an
accurate contrast. Market researchers don't *avoid* discovery; they
just don't have the legal means to do it.

But they certainly don't avoid it. They dig up every bit of
competitive data that they can. I used to spend hours pouring over
import data for clients, trying to tease the specific, by-company
competitor data out of the government reports, which made an effort
to
disguise the by-company data.

Sometimes they succeeded at hiding it, and sometimes I succeeded in
digging it out.

--
Ed Huntress

Have another coffee and reread what I posted. It's the facts
themselves that avoid discovery, not the researchers, in a situation
where revealing them would aid your business competitors.

Maybe you'll want to have another cup yourself. It was clear that your
sentence contained a grammatical error; it just wasn't clear what kind
of error you made. d8-)

"Facts" don't have volition -- they don't "actively avoid" anything. I
didn't think you were waxing lyrical and indulging in personification,
because the previous statement was about people -- lawyers and
engineers. So I guessed that you were referring to the people who do
those things, not that "facts" got up and ran away from "discovery."

My mistake. You WERE waxing lyrical. g



I spent my time in the Army keeping payroll data secret, not because
anyone cares what a Lieutenant makes, but because the location where
he receives it reveals troop deployments. Even the length of the
encrypted stream is valuable to a spy because it reveals changes in
the number of troops unless it's padded. Similar indirect analysis is
valuable in commercial espionage.

The CIA has large departments dedicated to collecting and analyzing
open-source economic data to better understand the strengths and
weaknesses of potential enemies. We had and used it to plan WW2
bombing raids on Japan because we had helped them build the factories
we destroyed, and kept copies of the plans.

Naturally we don't make it easy for others to reciprocate similarly
against us. The government -shouldn't- release economic data in such
detail that it will help the Chinese take over. Your difficulty was an
unintended collateral consequence.

Well, the Dept. of Commerce is explicit about why they do that.
They've been ordered by Congress not to divulge information that would
give one company an advantage over another. In this case, my client
was an American company, trying to find out what a couple of Japanese
companies were doing. That was 30 years ago.

Ed Huntress


The Titanium for Vietnam fighter jets came from the USSR, through a
tortuous network that concealed its final destination. The Market
Basket article I referenced told how they used intermediaries to buy
up land to avoid revealing their intent and driving up the price.
Those are examples of old tricks to deceive market, CIA, KGB, NSA
et.al. analysts looking for patterns.

As long as those trying to hide have incentive and means to pay better
than those trying to find, they will attract the better brains.
-jsw