Carbolicious Yet Intriguing Data

A couple of days ago, the New York Times featured a wonderful piece detailing the extraordinary business of a defense analyst turned bagel salesman. While he has been successful as a dough purveyor, and he finds it much more fulfilling that his former civil service career, what makes his current pursuit so intriguing are the scores of data about his customers and his sales that he has collected for years and years.

His primary quest? To correlate any possible factors to the varying theft rate of his bagels which he sells by 'honor system' stations in companies throughout the Metro DC area. His observations are priceless.

Comments

[Chester]

It was a great story. While it reminded you of my vending-machine-stories, it really is more similar to my BMW-dealership-stories. This line caught my eye: "I don't imagine that you would teach your children to cheat, so why do it yourselves?"

The bagel guy's admonishing sign reminds me of the stickers I used to plaster onto BMW drivers' windows, the first revision of which concluded with something like this: "We imagine your mother trained you to be a nice person and would be very disappointed to see you stealing parking spaces. Try not to disappoint your mother next time."

[abercrombie fitch]

Think they would read the BILL if they had to live by it?

[abercrombie]

talk about Oregon. It had a rhythm that kept me focused and didn't allow me to go numb at any point1.

[abercrombie]

Yet another reason why Santa Clara is so awesome.