The NYT recently published an article, “Netflix Competitors Learn the Power of Teamwork” by Steve Lohr, discussing the prize offered by Netflix for improving upon the algorithm it currently uses for recommending movies to Netflix customers and what came from the contest:

A contest set up by Netflix, which offered a $1 million prize to anyone who could significantly improve its movie recommendation system, ended on Sunday with two teams in a virtual dead heat, and no winner to be declared until September.

But the contest, which began in October 2006, has already produced an impressive legacy. It has shaped careers, spawned at least one start-up company and inspired research papers. It has also changed conventional wisdom about the best way to build the automated systems that increasingly help people make online choices about movies, books, clothing, restaurants, news and other goods and services…

The biggest lesson learned, according to members of the two top teams, was the power of collaboration. It was not a single insight, algorithm or concept that allowed both teams to surpass the goal Netflix … set ... Instead, they say, the formula for success was to bring together people with complementary skills and combine different methods of problem-solving.

Healthcare Premiums under Alternative Scenarios

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The Obama Healthcare Plan

Healthcare Premiums under Alternative Scenarios

I was thinking about the various situations and implications associated with the current healthcare system and some of the changes that have been proposed. I wanted to get a better handle on what, exactly, each of the issues means in terms of dollars spent by people paying into the healthcare system. To this end, I created a little numerical model that lets me play with the different scenarios to see what they each mean in dollar terms.

The assumptions I’m making that form the general layout of the model are:

• There are 100 people in the population.
• The population is distributed into three classes, high, medium, and low, based on the level of lifetime healthcare spending per person.
• Each person in the population that pays into the healthcare system makes a payment every month for healthcare from the time they are 18 years old until the time they die.
• The monthly payments made by the portion of the population that pays into the system exactly cover the total lifetime healthcare costs of the population.

Think about your typical insurance system: Car insurance (accident), home insurance (earthquake, flood), other insurance (damage, theft). These typical insurance systems all operate very similarly:

According to a recent BW article, “OfficeMax Calls Delivery Cutbacks a ‘Green’ Initiative” by John Carey, “motivated by environmental concerns”, OfficeMax announced that it will eliminate its Monday deliveries in the Washington, DC area.

… [C]ompressing 5 delivery days into 4 … reduces carbon emissions from delivery trucks (and from drivers commuting to work), and brings less traffic congestion. The company figures that just having the drivers stay home, instead of coming to work on Monday, eliminates 60,000 miles of commuting. The company is rolling out the program nationally this month, with different no-delivery days in different regions.