Kwabena Donkor, a former taxi driver and now a Stanford assistant professor of marketing, accessed a dataset of 1 billion credit card payments for New York City taxi trips to delve into customer behaviour. As predicted, 97% of customers abided by the norm of giving a tip. However, whilst 60% of customers would choose a pre-set option of 20%, 25%, or 30%, when the total fare increased, the customers were less willing to use a pre-set option, opting instead to choose their own—likely less significant—tip amount. Read full article here
Research
Researcher uses AI to make texts that are thousands of years old readable
The Gilgamesh Epic, the oldest work of world literature, has been brought back to life by LMU researchers in the Electronic Babylonian Literature project. Using their new Fragmentarium tool, they have discovered hundreds of manuscripts, including the most recent tablet of the Gilgamesh Epic which dates from 130 BC – thousands of years after the earliest known version. This shows how highly valued the Epic was, even at a late period. With the public release of the Fragmentarium, anyone can now explore the thousands of cuneiform fragments and explore the ancient Babylonian literature. Read full article here
Merv
March 12, 2023
