Apple's aspect dominance

When a successful, highly respected business dies unexpectedly, a bit of hyperbole is only natural. That said, the coverage has painted an awfully large picture of Steve Jobs' impact. The phrase "changed the world" has been difficult to avoid. (CNN Money doubled down on the theme following the headline "10 ways Steve Jobs changed the world" with the subtitle "There may never be another chief executive like him. Apple's former CEO and co-founder transformed the world's relationship with technology -- forever.")

We've also heard endless comparisons to Thomas Edison, which provide a useful bit of perspective. When Edison died, everyone with electricity or phone service (and many of those without) had his technology in their homes. Whether you went to the movies or the doctor, the legacy was unavoidable. By comparison, Apple, while a fantastically success company by most metrics, has a small footprint. Most of us don't have a Mac or an I-anything.

Apple's perceived footprint, however, is much larger. Based on news accounts and popular culture, you might get the impression that the typical American owns multiple Apple products. How did Apple manage this?

Some of the credit has to go the company's exceptionally effective branding (but that's a topic for another post). Then there's the kind products Apple makes, what we might call surface technology. Much, if not most, of the technology we use operates behind the scene. Personal electronics are easy to spot and are often used in public.

Then there's aspect dominance. I couldn't fins a good online definition of the concept (and I'm not qualified to write one) so I'll use the example that was given to me: when bitterweeds established themselves in a pasture, they would, from a distance, give the impression that fields were a solid yellow. When you got closer, you saw as much green as you did yellow. If you were a botanist observing those fields from a distance, it would be easy to overestimate the prevalence of that one species.

As you might imagine, shape and size contribute to aspect dominance. The bright flowers on top of relatively tall stalks allowed the weeds to have to effect they had. With social behavior, instead of height, we'd look for factors that make certain people more visible to the society (which generally means more visible in the media).

One obvious factor is a being in the entertainment industry. Apple has a huge presence (I'm writing this in a Hollywood coffee shop and I believe this is the only Dell in the house). Veteran sitcom writer Rob Long observed that it was actually a sign of security for someone in the industry not to use a Mac.

Then there are the demographics. Apple users tend to be upscale. Journalists these days tend to view the world through am upper-middle-class lens. Journalists also tend to be more urban (not many Apple stores in small town America) and, by the nature of their jobs, trendy. Nor, is this profile limited to journalists and entertainment professionals. Most prominent people tend to fall into one or more of these groups. In other words, there's a positive correlation between your visibility and your likelihood of owning an Apple product.

None of this takes away from Jobs accomplishments. It does, however, remind us that the press doesn't always do a good job keeping things in perspective.

Epidemiology is about communication

This article highlights the critical importance of continuing to try and communicate evidence-based medical information:

Most pancreatic cancers are aggressive and always terminal, but Steve was lucky (if you can call it that) and had a rare form called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor, which is actually quite treatable with excellent survival rates — if caught soon enough. The median survival is about a decade, but it depends on how soon it’s removed surgically. Steve caught his very early, and should have expected to survive much longer than a decade. Unfortunately Steve relied on a diet instead of early surgery. There is no evidence that diet has any effect on islet cell carcinoma. As he dieted for nine months, the tumor progressed, and took him from the high end to the low end of the survival rate.

Why did he do this? Well, outsiders like us can’t know; but many who avoid medical treatment in favor of unproven alternatives do so because they’ve been given bad information, without the tools or expertise to discriminate good from bad.

Everyone would prefer to avoid surgery -- especially painful, high-risk surgery with an uncertain prognosis. But this seems to be a clear case where better advice could have made a real difference. Unfortunately, the literature is full of spurious findings and it can be hard for even experts to sort these issues out.

The ultimate goal of Epidemiology is to give patients the best (high-quality) evidence available in order to assist them in making optimal decisions. We'll never know if the advice given to Steve Jobs was good or bad, but stories like this highlight how important it is to keep focusing on communication.