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Reality T.V. Math: Project Runway v. Fashion Star

Photo courtesy of luca pedrotti

I’ve been a fan of Project Runway since Heidi Klum, Tim Gunn and crazy Jay McCarroll stood in a room together for the first time. The stuff never gets old — from making skirts out of Twizzlers to designing wedding gowns for drama-prone models. And I’ve enjoyed many of the spawn created from Klum and Bravo’s original idea. (Well, except for 24-Hour Catwalk, which just stresses me out.)

So when I first heard about Jessica Simpson’s take on the fashion-designer reality television show, Fashion Star, I was intrigued. Not only because I like the fashion but also because of the retail aspect. In this series, which debuted on NBC on March 13, designers vie for bids from three retailers: H&M, Saks Fifth Avenue and Macy’s. After a quick and splashy runway show, featuring three original designs from two designers, buyers representing these retailers bid (or not) on the designs they want to have in their stores. A designer may get one bid, two bids, three bids or none at all. Then the designs are actually sold — the next day! — online and in stores. Instant gratification for the designers, buyers and viewers.

I’ve only seen the show once, and I don’t understand what Jessica Simpson, Nicole Richie and John Varvatos are supposed to be doing. But I’m most interested in the buyers.

That’s because not a week before on Project Runway (team Mondo!), the designers were challenged to come up with a ready-to-wear design that would not only sell in a retail store but also come in under a budget determined by a coster.

As I gathered from the episode a fashion coster determines the cost of manufacturing an item, while considering the retail value at the same time. In other words, will the retail value of the design actually cover the cost of materials and manufacturing and leave room for other costs and profit?

I imagine there was lots and lots of editing. And I imagine that the coster who appeared on the show is also so good at her job that the math comes almost second-nature. At any rate, she whipped out numbers lickity-split and with very little emotion. She would look at a design and say, “This would sell for $300.” Then she’d offer, “And you have a $48 fabric budget.” The designers “shopped” for fabric that met their budgets and their designs.

Compare this with Fashion Star. Near as I can tell, the buyers — who are sitting at least 50 feet away from the runway — don’t get a very good look at the designs. How many zippers does the skirt have? Is the fabric silk or could you get away with a less expensive blend? Are the pockets in the jacket real?

See all of these details make a big difference in materials and manufacturing costs, I would think. So when these buyers place a bid on a mini-collection, how can they be sure they’re not just throwing money at something with bigger manufacturing costs than can be covered by the retail price?

Maybe these buyers have an inside look at the designs before they hit the runway or before the bids are made. But I guess that’s my gripe about this show — why hide the math?

Unlike Rachel on Friends, real fashion buyers are not just in it for the cute clothes. Like costers, they depend on a great deal of mathematics in making the decisions whether or not to stock their racks with caftans or mini-skirts. It’s not just about what they think will sell — it’s also about what can be sold at a reasonable profit.

I’m comparing apples to oranges here, but the underlying idea is the same — whether figuring the manufacturing costs or deciding how much to bid on a design, the math is critical. Without computations of some kind, it looks like stores and designers are simply telling us what we shouldbuy, not listening to what we want.

I thought the Project Runway episode was cool. I’m less enthusiastic about Fashion Star. And for me — big surprise! — it comes down to the math.

Did you watch this episode of Project Runway? Do you watch Fashion Star? What’s your take on the magical math of these reality television programs?

ATTENTION EVERYONE! Did you know that next month is Math Awareness Month? You do now! I’m planning a big celebration here at Math for Grownups. So be sure to check out the Facebook page and blog for upcoming contests, interviews and even a new blog design!

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In Math for Grownups

Statistics in reporting: When trend stories fail

Photo courtesy of apdik

Ah, the trend story — we love them and we hate them. Presumably, they tell us what’s hot or not, but they also overgeneralize with very few sources. Ask a room full of writers about trend stories, and you’re likely to see a few eyerolls. Here are some examples:

“Man buns” are in

Male college students seek sugar daddies to pay tuition bills

Female college students seek sugar daddies to pay tuition bills

Rich kids are taking private jets to summer camp

It’s not that these stories are inherently bad. In fact, they’re fascinating. The problem with trend stories is that too many readers, viewers and listeners take them to the next, not-so-logical step. These stories don’t mean that all men wear buns or that even a majority of men in Brooklyn wear buns. What they actually mean is that the reporter discovered a certain number of men in Brooklyn — plus a Top Chef contestent — wearing “man buns.”

That’s because words like majority or most or average actually have mathematical meanings. What’s more, I believe we count on these words to have real meaning, rather than serving as euphemisms for something that the reporter or editor saw a few times. Even using words like many or some isn’t a great way around this. These words cloud issues, rather than elucidate them.

Let’s look at an example. For a few years, sociologists, city planners and reporters have been talking about “food deserts.” These are geographic areas where residents have very few good options for grocery shopping. Because these are poorer regions, people tend to get their food from convenience stores or fast food restaurants, because they can’t drive or take public transportation to shop for fresh fruits and vegetables.

Sounds awful doesn’t it? For a few months, I saw dozens of stories on this phenomenon. But are food deserts ubiquitous? Or were these reports based on a few examples? Thing is, we can actually find out. (Check out the link to see for sure.)

That’s where statistics come in. And reporters don’t necessarily have to do the hard work of crunching these numbers. What is really important is the ability to interpret the data. And it’s critical to know about something called the Law of Large Numbers. [pullquote]The Law of Large Numbers says that the average of the results obtained from a large number of trials should be close to the expected value.[/pullquote]

In probability, performing the same experiment over and over again (and recording the results) is paramount. Otherwise, the data and conclusions just won’t mean much. The Law of Large Numbers says that the average of the results obtained from a large number of trials should be close to the expected value.

Without going into the nitty-gritty of the math, we can use the gist of the Law of Large Numbers to apply to trend stories. If you want to know whether food deserts are a real trend, you’d better locate more than three of them. If you want to say that they’re located in urban areas, you should check rural areas too. Because if your conclusion is based on only a handful of data, it’s not worth much.

And that’s not all. If you only look at data from a set with only certain characteristics, you can’t generalize your conclusion. It might be easy for those of us who live in cities to assume that food deserts are only in urban areas, right? Perhaps this is where trend stories are most likely to fail–when the writer or editor doesn’t consider life outside his personal bubble.

In other words, if you know three female college students who are financing their tuition with the help of “sugar daddies,” that doesn’t mean this is happening all over the U.S. You’d better get some more solid data than that, or you’re not being a responsible journalist.

And for all of you readers out there, look for these signs of a trend story gone awry: most, many, some say, could be, etc. Enjoy the story, if you are so inclined, but don’t make the mistake of generalizing the anecdotes past exactly what has been reported.

In other words, a couple of guys in Brooklyn may be wearing man buns, but that doesn’t mean you (or a guy you know) won’t look out of place in your neck of the woods.

What are your favorite trend stories? Have you ever written a trend story that succeeded? If you’re a writer, what advice do you have for other writers for avoiding the trend-story trap?

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In Math at Work Monday

Math at Work Monday: Craig the writer

Welcome week three of our month devoted to publishing and media. If you haven’t previous posts, what’s stopping you? So far, we’ve looked at book publishing and on-air meteorology (television weatherpersons). This week, it’s time to look at writing. Today you’ll meet Craig Guillot, a freelance writer in New Orleans, who specializes in finance writing, among other things. Craig is the author of Stuff About Money: No BS Financial Advice for Regular People, an ebook, which he says will be available in April. (I’m a source for one section!)

Bottom line? Math helps keep Craig profitable. So if you’re a budding freelance writer–or looking for ways to leave more on your bottom line–listen up.

Can you explain what you do for a living?

I’m a non-fiction freelance writer. My specialties include business, personal finance, retail, real estate, travel and entertainment. I’ve written for publications and web sites, such as Entrepreneur, CNNMoney.com, Washington Post, Nationalgeographic.com and dozens of trade publications. I also have a personal finance book Stuff About Money: No BS Financial Advice for Regular People.

When do you use basic math in your job?

In the actual writing, not much. Just like any other writer or journalist, I interview sources, research, take trips out in the field, gather information and write. I occasionally do a little photography and video too. I do use math on occasion in some of my personal finance work to demonstrate and calculate different things related to retirement and investing.

But I use math a lot in the background. Writing just happens to be my trade. Like any other self-employed person, I am ultimately running a business. As a freelancer I sell my services to editors and corporate clients. I have a lot of regular clients, but I’m constantly taking on new projects and new deals. I need to be able to carefully estimate my time and expenses to give a client an accurate quote.

To me, everything is about the hourly rate. I need to use this as a basis for building my income. And while my overhead isn’t much, I do have to know what’s going out to pay taxes, what’s going into savings, retirement and everything else. It may seem like part of my personal life but I consider it all part of my job. When you’re self employed, you have to constantly think about all of these things.

Do you use any technology (like calculators or computers) to help with this math?

I’m not sure I even have a calculator in my office anymore, but my main tool is Excel. I use it for everything, and I mean everything. It’s a calculator but so much more. There is no problem that can’t be solved, no analysis that can’t be made, in Excel. When you learn how to use it and how to write the formulas you need, you can do anything with it. I use it to analyze my revenues, analyze the profitability of certain assignments. Like everyone else, I use Quickbooks, but I also use Excel for background stuff.

I break everything down to a formula or percentage. This includes my monthly income goals. It doesn’t have to be that way. I don’t imagine it’s that way for many other writers but it works for me and helps me make the optimal decisions. I’ve used Excel to track, analyze and compute things in my regular life as well. I used it in the remodeling of our house, in tracking my net worth, in monitoring my investments, planning retirement, planning trips. I sit down, make up a spreadsheet, build some formulas, input the data and then use it to help make decisions. I run marathons and even use it to track my training runs and races. The more you learn how to use Excel and write formulas, the more uses you find for it.

How do you think math helps you do your job better?

One way it helps me is with analyzing my hourly rate and profitability. Whenever I take on special projects for a corporate client or a custom publisher, I use it to give a quote. I prefer to work on a project rate. I give them a single number but behind that is a lot of math that I have used to arrive at that number. They don’t need to know any of that.

I may also build in a variance. It will let me know if I might be able to live with a cut in that number. So if they want to try to negotiate that down a bit, I know that I can drop by 5%, 7%, 10% or whatever it might be for me to still make what I need to make.

I also need to factor in opportunity cost. That is what else I could be doing with my time. Do I take this project which will tie me up for three weeks or do I decline it and go after smaller but potentially more lucrative projects that will make my time more flexible? I use math to figure all this out.

How comfortable with math do you feel?

In relation to personal finance and business math, I feel very comfortable with it because I use it so much and see the value in it. But all the standard stuff you learn in school? I really don’t remember any of that. I’d have to pull out a book and look up some formulas if you wanted me to calculate cubic volume or something like that.

What kind of math did you take in high school?  Did you like it/feel like you were good at it?

Just the basics. Algebra, geometry, standard high school stuff. I wasn’t particularly good at it, I was just average. But I majored in business in college and took a lot of accounting, finance and business math classes. I always excelled at those and had a stronger interest in them. Math dealing with money just felt real to me. There was an instant connection of “Oh, I could actually use this someday.”

Did you have to learn new skills in order to do the math you use in your job? Or was it something that you could pick up using the skills you learned in school?

I did pick up some new skills, but a lot of the business and personal finance math I used today can be traced right back to college. The fact that I actually enjoy this kind of math really helps.

Anything else you want to mention?

Yes. I believe that many of our growing financial problems in this country—like people getting into mortgages they couldn’t afford, our lack of savings, our failure to put enough money away for retirement, our problems with credit card debt—can be traced partly to our failure to use math in our financial lives. People buy homes and cars on emotion but rarely run the numbers. They wouldn’t use debt to overspend if they really knew the long-term consequences. There is a numerical answer for everything in your finances. You have to know why that number is important, how to calculate it and how to use it.

Any questions for Craig? I’m sure he’d be happy to answer them!

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