Industry and Trading Matrix

Posted: 2012-06-06 | Author: | Filed under: industry, market, nullsec | Tags: , , | 9 Comments

Numbers > Words

If you can’t tell, I’m a very quantifiable person. Using numbers to guide decisions is a method of problem solving that I have cultivated as my professional career has grown.

I remember this one particular insiadent that really stood out where the numbers really proved valuable.

A few years ago when a group of difficult C-level people were up for a laptop refresh, I sent them a simple survey with a list of considerations for their new machines. Each person had rate weight, speed, storage capacity, ruggedness, maximum resolution, monitor size, etc on a scale of 1-3 (3 being the highest priority).

I then took these results and found the general need of the group. The data told me what machine to buy. I wan’t trying to tailor a machine to their needs, their needs dictated the selection. No fights were had when the machines arrived because they all knew that I had properly weighed everyone’s opinions.

To the Spreadsheets!

Since I have performed a number of industry and trading activities in Eve, I felt that the same type of analysis would offer some insight to the greater community.

I made a list of negative and positive factors and applied a value to each of them. The total value has a little bit of logic built into it to help produce a more meaningful result.

Total =(-(Sum all the bad things)+(Sum all the good things))

The English equivalent of this would be something along the line of, “Considering all the bad and good things, what is the best thing I should be doing to make money in Eve?”

(Yes the scale is 1-3, but the sheer amplitude of risk and profitability of Patch Speculation made me weight it with a 4. The external factor of CCP changing a loot table or rebalancing something on the fly is an enormous risk when speculating)

Note that these weights are based on my experiences and therefore you would most likely apply different values to each activity. Just like with the difficult C-level people, getting a larger survey group would help normalize the data and CYA.