Contrast Bias and Pricing

Joel has a great essay on pricing mistakes.

My sources inform me that this was a decision made by the MBAs in the company over the strong objections of the developers. It's ironic that the MBAs don't even get the basic MBA stuff right; this is entirely a bad move for reasons that business school graduates should be able to figure out without understanding the technology at all.

Once you go to business school you start realizing why the MBAs get this stuff so wrong all the time. They've got all the tools and don't know how to use them. They also often fail to realize that certain numbers are leading indicators (run-up before a change takes place) and others are lagging indicators (run-up after a change takes place). These two things cause all sorts of screwy ideas to get promoted.