Interesting article on Yelp bias.
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Yelp has long faced accusations that it manipulates its business-review ratings to sell advertising – five stars for a big ad buy, say, and two stars for a turndown.
The verdict from a federal appeals court: There’s nothing illegal about that.
Yelp adamantly denies giving its paying clients more favorable reviews, but even if such allegations could be proved, said the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, Yelp is entitled to set a price for its ads – and the businesses reviewed have no legal right to a high rating.
“As Yelp has the right to charge for legitimate advertising services, the (alleged) threat of economic harm … is, at most, hard bargaining,” and not extortion or unfair business practices, Judge Marsha Berzon said in Tuesday’s 3-0 ruling.
The court upheld a federal judge’s dismissal of a proposed class-action damage suit by small-business owners who claimed Yelp’s sales representatives told them their ratings would depend on their decision to buy ads.”
http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Yelp-can-give-paying-clients-better-ratings-5731200.php
Reading Quiz #3: Complete by February 7, 2017
Some quick instructions:
- You must complete the quiz by the start of class on February 7, 2017. The quiz is based on the readings for the whole week.
- When you click on the link, you may see a Google sign in screen. Use your AccessNet ID and password to sign in. It will then take you to the quiz.
If it says you don’t have access, make sure you’re signed out of your regular Gmail (non-TUMail) account! - You can only do the quiz once. If you submit multiple times, I’ll only use the first (oldest) one.
- This is “open book” – you can use the articles to answer the questions – but do not get help from anyone else.
Ready? Take the quiz by clicking this link.
Open Data Examples
In class we talked about a few examples of open data. Here are some others:
- Business: data.gov’s “Impact” section
- Science: The Genomes Unzipped project
- Government: New York City parking violations
- Journalism: Swarmize
In-Class Exercise 3.1: Trusting Data
Here is the exercise
Weekly Question #2: Complete by February 2, 2017
Leave your response as a comment on this post by the beginning of class on February 2, 2017. Remember, it only needs to be three or four sentences. For these weekly questions, I’m mainly interested in your opinions, not so much particular “facts” from the class!
If you sign in using your AccessNet ID and password you won’t have to fill in the name, email and captcha fields when you leave your comment.
Here is the question (well, it’s not really a question):
Find a online article dated within last two weeks from a credible source that has something to do with data. It can be about the role of data or an interesting data-driven analysis. It should also be relevant to your major and of interest to you. Copy and paste the URL directly into your response followed by a few sentences that explain what is interesting about it.
You can use any of the sources under the “Great Data Sites” menu on the right sidebar of this page, or you can use any online news or magazine site.
In-Class Exercise 2.2: Finding Sources of Data
Here is the exercise.
Reading Quiz #2: Complete by January 31, 2017
Some quick instructions:
- You must complete the quiz by the start of class on January 31, 2017. The quiz is based on the readings for the whole week.
- When you click on the link, you may see a Google sign in screen. Use your AccessNet ID and password to sign in. It will then take you to the quiz.
If it says you don’t have access, make sure you’re signed out of your regular Gmail (non-TUMail) account! - You can only do the quiz once. If you submit multiple times, I’ll only use the first (oldest) one.
- This is “open book” – you can use the articles to answer the questions – but do not get help from anyone else.
Ready? Take the quiz by clicking this link.
Assignment #1: Creating a Data Analysis Plan
Here are the instructions in word (and as a PDF). Make sure you read them carefully!
In-Class Exercise 2.1: Creating a Data Dictionary
Here is the exercise.
And here is the spreadsheet you’ll need [In-Class Exercise 2.1 – 2015 Car Fuel Econ [Start]]
Weekly Question #1: Complete by January 26, 2017
Leave your response as a comment on this post by the beginning of class on January 26, 2017. Remember, it only needs to be three or four sentences. For these weekly questions, I’m mainly interested in your opinions, not so much particular “facts” from the class!
If you sign in using your AccessNet ID and password you won’t have to fill in the name, email and captcha fields when you leave your comment.
Here is the question:
“Conventional wisdom” are statements people generally accept as true but are never really tested. One example is the belief that a company should avoid hiring people with criminal records. These can be supported or disproven through data – i.e., Evolv’s discovery that people with criminal records are up to 1.5% more productive than the average worker.
Give an example of a piece of conventional wisdom you’ve heard and explain what data you would collect to test it.