On Broadway

The Tony Awards were presented this past Sunday.

Fourteen different shows that debuted this season won an award. If you're in the New York area, you already see the ads touting the victories. Many of these shows, from the revival of Hair to the new star-studded play God of Carnage, are expecting to reap benefits at the box office with the summer tourists. Billy Elliot has played to full houses since its opening, and with its 10 Tony wins its success will manifest as endurance, rather than with increased attendance.

The rest, if they haven't closed yet, are weighing their options. The musical Shrek, which won only one award for costumes, will be offering steep discounts in an effort to attrack theatregoers. Other musicals are closing because they can't compete with the award winners.

This is the pattern that Broadway shows have followed for decades, exacerbated in 2009 by the economy. The summer tourist season is a great boon to the established shows, to which out-of-towners will flock. And it's big business, with yearly Broadway revenues just shy of $950 Million over the past few years. And this doesn't count New York's vibrant Off-Broadway scene.

Broadway producers aren't dumb, however, and they track their own metrics. Much of this data is internal, but the expectation of an award-show bump to recoup a significant investment is what keeps some of these shows playing this long in the first place.

On striking nurses

There are 650 nurses at Englewood Hospital, and they're striking because of a pay dispute, among other things. To strike for more money alone seems absurd in this economy, so I hope it's not just that. Sorry, I digress.

As per the Bergen Record's report in 6/9/2009:

• the nurses' union says the average salary for nurses in Englewood is $80,000.
• the hospital says the average salary for nurses in Englewood is nearly $100,000.

Both numbers are possibly right. Why? Definitions.

I would ask each side of the argument for the formula they used. It's conceivable that the union is using a median instead of a straight average. Maybe the hospital is only counting registered nurses. What about those working part-time? Are there nurses that split duty between multiple hospitals? Maybe the nurse administrators' salaries are in one of these calculations.

In any case, this information is both biased and incomplete. Without a clear definition, "Nurse's Salary" is a metric that I would never put into a report. And even if I'm not privy to the calculation, I would want to know that it would be clear and understandable by all who would need to see it.

Nurses are valuable commodities by any definition, I hope this dispute is resolved quickly.

Welcome!

Hear that? It's the sound of data. Data, in the wild. Watch it crouch until its prey is not looking.

Welcome to my blog. In these pixels I hope to call attention to the uses and misuses of information. Oh, boy, are there lots. Usually there's two sides to every story, and when data is involved there's probably twisting of the truth on both.

So, stop by from time to time. I hope to inform, educate, and elicit the rare giggle.