A Tool to Explain Affirmative Action
Virginia Postrel,
New York Times,
Jan 30, 2003
If you wonder why I get hepped up about apparently pointless issues (such as, say, the debate between aggregation and federated search in learning object repositories), this article will lead part way toward an understanding. And I like how it explains it: people's selections are based on how the choices are presented. If products are organized by brand, people will tend to buy from a small set of brands. If they are organize by type, people will by from a small set of types. So if you want to encourage diversity in selection, you need to consider carefully how choices are presented. The author ties this all into affirmative action, and a case could be made there. But that's only one instance of a much wider application of this theory.
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