LinkedIn Data analysis

The LinkedIn Blog posted today:

One hypothesis is that many of the employees left the financial industry.  According to the LinkedIn data set, that just isn’t true. There are a handful of people that did transition to other industries and start new careers, but most stayed in the financial space. To be specific, other than two acquiring companies (Bank of America acquired Merrill Lynch and Nomura acquired Lehman Brothers’ franchise in the Asia Pacific region), Barclays was by far the biggest beneficiary, scooping up 10% of the laid off talent, followed by Credit Suisse at 1.5% and Citigroup at 1.1 %.

I commented on the posting as follows:

Interesting analysis! Having left Fidelity then going back inside to spend some time on a contract, I know that there are LinkedIn profiles for folks still showing they are at Fidelity and that is not true. Is that an exception? or are there other profiles incorrectly reflecting a change in status? How much would that throw off this analysis?

Bottom-line, it is a data point. Be careful how you use the data.

The assumption is that folks have accurately reflected their status in their LinkedIn profile. Some number I have recognized have not. What is that percent? How can we arrived at a good number? Not sure, in the meantime, I would be careful with the numbers.

Cell Phone Study

WASHINGTON - Researchers secretly tracked the locations of 100,000 people outside the United States through their cell phone use and concluded that most people rarely stray more than a few miles from home.

The first-of-its-kind study by Northeastern University raises privacy and ethical questions for its monitoring methods, which would be illegal in the United States.

It also yielded somewhat surprising results that reveal how little people move around in their daily lives. Nearly three-quarters of those studied mainly stayed within a 20-mile-wide circle for half a year.

The scientists would not disclose where the study was done, only describing the location as an industrialized nation.

Read the full story here

This story caught my eye for a couple of reasons. One my daughter attends Northeastern. Two the privacy concerns are suspected and that is what concerns me.

There seems to be an implied distrust of these researchers. Can't some folks just naturally do what is right?Dealing with the data in an aggregate format should be fine.

Room for improvement on both sides. One; on the researchers to be more explicit about the steps they took to cut off the conspiracy theorists. Two; on the writers part to just present the data without creating hysteria.

Good Experience: Xinu - a summary page

Put your web site URL into Xinu, click GO, and sit and watch the statistics update as it brings it data from multiple sources.

Interesting.