Socializing at Cross Purposes
Elizabeth F. Churchill
Yahoo! Research | [e-mail]
January + February 2010

interactions

Indulge me for a moment. I have a series of jokes I want to tell you:

How many social scientists does
it take to change a lightbulb? None.
They do not change lightbulbs; they
search for the root cause of why the
last one went out.
How many simulationists does it
take to change a lightbulb? There’s no
finite number. Each one builds a fully
validated model, but the light never
actually goes on.

How many statisticians does it
take to change a lightbulb? We really
don’t know yet. Our entire sample
was skewed to the left.

So what’s with the (not par-
ticularly funny) jokes? The point
is that they play off particular
ways of thinking. In doing so,
they show us how different the
world can appear, depending on
your perspective.

This was evident in a recent meeting. Reminiscent of another set of common (and usually also not funny) jokes involving different nationalities walking into a bar, there were six people in a room: an interaction designer, a statistician with an interest in behavioral modeling, a social scientist, a computer scientist, an self-described “back end with a touch of front end” engineer, and a business executive. We were brainstorming about accessing social Web applications from personal mobile devices.

Two minutes into our con-
versation, I said, “We should
start with some sound social
principles.” This was my bland
opening gambit, a preface. Or so
I thought. I paused for a fraction
of a second, took a breath and
… everyone started talking at
once—like whippets chasing after
the faux rabbit at a dog race, the
conversation was off. Then it
stopped, followed by blank looks.