A Quick Puzzle for Market Research Brains
We have just published the Versta Research Fall 2015 Newsletter, offering an interactive puzzle to test your analytical skills as a research brain. It is based on a fascinating study published half a century ago in The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.
When I first encountered the puzzle it stuck in my mind for quite some time. So simple, yet so tricky. It reflected the style of intellectual work we do every day at Versta Research, but it took a few weeks until I could articulate how. It was about science, but not really, because the answer to this puzzle is 100% knowable whereas research findings rarely are.
I encourage you to give A Quick Puzzle for Market Research Brains a try. Whether you get it right or wrong, it offers an important lesson that will likely change your approach to research.
What is that lesson? I won’t give it away here, as that would take the fun away if you haven’t tried it yourself. So I’ll just offer some teaser sentences from our Versta Research Fall 2015 Newsletter:
- This is the essence of scientific thinking and it is crucial to the research process. We collect data, analyze it, look for patterns, and offer up explanations. But those explanations are likely to be wrong unless __________________.
- The take-away from this exercise is that great researchers look for __________________. Whether you arrived at the right answer in this exercise matters less than your thought process in getting to that answer.
- Not many people get it right because __________________.
- Therefore, a systematic, painstaking processes of __________________ must be as central to our work as theory building, strategizing, modeling, measuring, testing, and storytelling.
Curious? Try the Quick Puzzle for Market Research Brains yourself. You will soon know the answers.
