When a Professor has been successful in research and teaching they are eventually given tenure, which basically means they cannot be fired. The argument is that this frees them up to do more risky, controversial research that might not be best for their career, but that answers important questions. A professor that I work closely with was given tenure a few weeks ago, and she just called me into her office to get my help on a new project she is working on. Whether it's an example of the benefits of tenure or the downside or tenure, it's going to be interesting to work on.
She came across some data on the Mustang Ranch Brothel in Nevada, probably the most famous brothel in the country. We have data on how much money each girl made, every single day from 1994-1999, and we're right now trying to come up with some interesting effects we might be able to find in there. Here's a few of our ideas (and I'd love to hear yours if you have any):
-Is there an effect on prostitution from weather. Heat makes people more aggressive, sunshine makes them happier, do either of these effect prostitution?
-Any effects from the economy. Stock prices, unemployment, etc.
-Any effect from moon phase. (This has actually been shown to effect stock returns)
-How does it relate to gambling? Might it be a substitute, where higher brothel revenues are correlated with lower casino revenues? Or is it a complement, where there would be a positive correlation from people doing both together?
-Does it increase with religious holidays like Christmas? Or hallmark holidays like Mothers Day and Valentines Day?
-How does the posting of reviews on each girl affect revenues? Might it actually lower them from overly increasing expectations (or salience of previous customers)?
And so on. Let me know if you have any other interesting ideas, or even want to help with this project.
6 comments:
I'll tell you where to put those Coach Boots...
Don't you have the confound of how much the girl was working (if sick, tired, etc, makes less...and her regular clients don't move to someone else)? See, I know my prostitution trends.
But a neat data set to play with, for sure.
do the girls menses synchronize?
also, of all the places for a coach boot advertisment, this may be the best.
The boot advertisement may be a sign that you should change your name to Boot Shew
I bet that there was a progression of sex acts from 94-99. The internet keeps upping the ante for hardcore. I can't even tell if I
m into it or disgusted by it anymore. So I bet you can find more nasty stuff going on with different orifices as the years go on. But then again I bet in the medieval ages people were licking ass.
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