

Retail in real time - stangeek
http://www.retale.com/info/retail-in-real-time/

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bruceb
What bugs me about these things is that lots of people don't realize this an
avg # sold in X time. I have heard people say well it has been X seconds so 1k
colas have been sold. Well it is 3am in the morning so no they haven't. At 3pm
10k will sell in that time.

Maybe this is making a distinction with out a difference but I think the short
cut of not saying avg leads to many thinking that literately every X seconds
an event happens. I have seen so many news reports that use sloppy wording
that leads to this kind of thinking.

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lnanek2
A lot of the time they are using global stats anyway that are pretty averaged
out across hours as well. It is 6AM here, yes, and everyone is buying coffee
on the way to work, but it is 9PM in Australia and people are buying drinks in
bars. It is probably cola time somewhere else, like India.

I don't think that level of detail is needed for this anyway, though. The
point is to make it clear a lot of these things are sold, which can then
change the way you think. A programmer may never write an app related to baby
food, then see how much baby food sells, then realize it could make sense.

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bruceb
Well in this case they say US retail and it does say real time hence one might
believe that yes this is actually happening right now. Best Buy employees
don't work at 3am unless it is BF.

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pandatigox
Do the stats revealed here really reflect the current retail? Or does it just
take a stat trend (for example X sold in Y minutes/seconds)and apply a linear
equation[1] to "predict" how much consumers would buy?

[1] Something like this?

    
    
       f(t) = m*t + c

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josephlord
1 in 10 Best Buy customers gets a virus removed???

Firearms spending 2/3 of toys?

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maad
I would assume viruses removed would be in bulk batches, so people with dozens
of viruses on a single computer. As someone said earlier just taking the X
number of things per day and then averaging that out over the day in real time
is really misleading.

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georgefox
I wouldn't mind a pause button.

