A Freakonomic Analysis Of The... Ticket Fiasco

[playabike]

I thought some here would find this an interesting read...

Situation Normal, All Fucked Up: A Freakonomic Analysis of the Burning Man 2012 Ticket Fiasco

[Eric]

Personally (ie, not as a Mod) I'll read it when they get rid of all the bright colored excess on both sides.

Seriously, got a few paragraphs in & had so much trouble trying to focus on the middle third that has the writing when there's an equal amount of "busy-ness" on either side. My reaction was basically "ghaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" with the lurid colors.

People really need to learn how to make readable layouts.

[playabike]

Adblock Plus kept all that crap from showing on my screen, the most useful addon of all time for me. Whenever I see the internet from someone else's pc I also say "ghaaaaaaa!!", only from almost every website.

[International Incident]

Personally (ie, not as a Mod) I'll read it when they get rid of all the bright colored excess on both sides.

Seriously, got a few paragraphs in & had so much trouble trying to focus on the middle third that has the writing when there's an equal amount of "busy-ness" on either side. My reaction was basically "ghaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" with the lurid colors.

People really need to learn how to make readable layouts.

OK, I read it.

I thought it was going to be by the people that are “Freakonomics”. It’s not. I want my 5 mins back.

And the author isn’t even an economist. "Tony holds a doctorate in social theory and is the author of the novels...”.

save your time people

[Max Callahan]

Skimmed it, 2 obvious errors, first they say that the number of ticket requests isn't known when Marion said that ticket request were just shy of 3 times the number of tickets available (which we all round to 120,000 requests for ease of math), and second they assert that tier 1 tickets were drawn first when the official I got tickets thread shows everyone reporting tier 3 ticket notifications then tier 2 then tier 1 (which is, imho, the more fair way of doing it as then all the people who got tier 3 are out of the drawing for tier 2, and all the people who got tier 3 and 2 are out of the drawing for tier 1, this would also lead to the observed result of people almost exclusively getting tickets at the top tier they put in for).
Run on sentences for the win!


Edit:
Also the whole prisoners dilemma of how much do I game the system isn't going to cause mass shortages like we saw.
Quick example 10 people want tickets to an lottery that has 10 tickets to give out, they don't know how many people actually want tickets so they each put in for 10.
Oh my god, thinks the org, 100 people are trying to get tickets. however at the end of sales 6.5 people have tickets (crap, to simple an example, rounding furiously).
Ok at the end of sales 6 people say they have tickets, however in reality 3 people have the 1 ticket they need 2 people have 1 extra, and 1 guy has 2, after a day or two those extra tickets redistribute and things got much closer to 100% fulfillment (and in a perfect system with rational actors you will see 100% (pause for laugh)).
To get for that outcome to the shortages we're seeing requires more people trying for tickets that are available on top of people gaming the system.
The real prisoners dilemma is how much do i game the system, because if you game the system at the average level of system gaming your expected chance to get tickets is close to the chance you would have if no one gamed the system, and you have to over buy that amount if you want to improve your chances of winning. This is what the Org really needs to take into account for next year.

[mshaman]

Skimmed it, 2 obvious errors, first they say that the number of ticket requests isn't known when Marion said that ticket request were just shy of 3 times the number of tickets available (which we all round to 120,000 requests for ease of math), and second they assert that tier 1 tickets were drawn first when the official I got tickets thread shows everyone reporting tier 3 ticket notifications then tier 2 then tier 1 (which is, imho, the more fair way of doing it as then all the people who got tier 3 are out of the drawing for tier 2, and all the people who got tier 3 and 2 are out of the drawing for tier 1, this would also lead to the observed result of people almost exclusively getting tickets at the top tier they put in for).
Run on sentences for the win!


Edit:
Also the whole prisoners dilemma of how much do I game the system isn't going to cause mass shortages like we saw.
Quick example 10 people want tickets to an lottery that has 10 tickets to give out, they don't know how many people actually want tickets so they each put in for 10.
Oh my god, thinks the org, 100 people are trying to get tickets. however at the end of sales 6.5 people have tickets (crap, to simple an example, rounding furiously).
Ok at the end of sales 6 people say they have tickets, however in reality 3 people have the 1 ticket they need 2 people have 1 extra, and 1 guy has 2, after a day or two those extra tickets redistribute and things got much closer to 100% fulfillment (and in a perfect system with rational actors you will see 100% (pause for laugh)).
To get for that outcome to the shortages we're seeing requires more people trying for tickets that are available on top of people gaming the system.
The real prisoners dilemma is how much do i game the system, because if you game the system at the average level of system gaming your expected chance to get tickets is close to the chance you would have if no one gamed the system, and you have to over buy that amount if you want to improve your chances of winning. This is what the Org really needs to take into account for next year.

Nice observations. The only one I might personally amend is the part about the Org needing to take this into account for next year... the way to do that would be to eliminate game-theory by creating a deterministic system, i.e. can the lottery.

[alt12]

OK, I read it.

I thought it was going to be by the people that are “Freakonomics”. It’s not. I want my 5 mins back.

And the author isn’t even an economist. "Tony holds a doctorate in social theory and is the author of the novels...”.

save your time people

This is self-evidenct from his simplistic Economics 101 analysis of the situation, including a forced "tragedy of the commons" reference and use of elementary game-theory. A more thoughtful analysis and deconstruction by a real economist using econometrics (based on available data) in addition to game theory would be an interesting read.

[graidawg]

Personally (ie, not as a Mod) I'll read it when they get rid of all the bright colored excess on both sides.

Seriously, got a few paragraphs in & had so much trouble trying to focus on the middle third that has the writing when there's an equal amount of "busy-ness" on either side. My reaction was basically "ghaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" with the lurid colors.

People really need to learn how to make readable layouts.

OK, I read it.

I thought it was going to be by the people that are “Freakonomics”. It’s not. I want my 5 mins back.

And the author isn’t even an economist. "Tony holds a doctorate in social theory and is the author of the novels...”.

save your time people

me too! it was like reading the thoughtless rants about how tickets could be done better at the height of the storm. I want my 4 minutes back

[Fiver]

After reading it, I have to say the top comment after is the best. A reverse dutch auction for tickets. I like the idea.

[Stephendragonfly]

@Alt12
A realistic econometric analysis would require much more data than is currently (or likely to become) available.

[BBadger]

This is absolute garbage, on a garbage website, full of ads. I'm wondering if playabike is some sort of shill. At least the site isn't trying to sell some book like that other garbage blog.

[playabike]

Yikes ppl. I skimmed this article and thought maybe it and some of the comments underneath it would be at least an interesting even if wrong read for folks around this forum. I have been lurking here for months trying to find ANY news about the ticket situation and hadn't seen this posted anywhere so silly me... I agree, that site is gaudy crap but I don't see it like that with adblock filtering thank goodness. Sorry for any eye or brain pain, going back to lurk mode now.

Shill, hehe I think I have been wanting to be called that for years but didn't know it until now, thanks for that!