Bella consults

The journal CHIP from Munich tells:

“Truly, in supermarkets they put beer and diapers side by side.”

That’s Data Mining. Because: There are young men. Young women have sent them. They forgot to buy diapers. The men are bored with it and take a beer. Wal Mart knew that for long. And moved beer to the diapers. And made a fortune.

I don’t get it. Beer and diapers sold together. Before they stood together. Why now together? Earning money only with beer and diapers? Why not beer in every shelf? What do women do now? How do they find diapers?

He says (and he has won again, because of Data Mining) that it’s all a lie, CHIP is hallucinating. Then I explored a supermarket in Nuremberg.

In this supermarket (Aldi) beer and diapers are placed together. Because of Data Mining?

Aha. In fact beer and diapers are located just opposite each other. Bicycles and toothbrushes, too. Then to the next supermarket. There it is 23 meters from diapers to beer. I wanted to take a photo. But I was thrown out.

Then I asked him. He says: Data Mining is about relations in shopping baskets. But that doesn’t tell anything about placement. Some things bought together are better placed far away from each other. People then pass by lots of things which they might want to buy, too.

That sounds good: a bicycle for example.

Good news: more read Bella, less Germany’s boulevard newspaper Bild. The German journal Spiegel seems happy, too. So much, that –24 % is steeper than –31 %. I painted how it should look like (click to enlarge)

Der Spiegel, No. 10, 2009–03–02, p. 87