On Orbitz, Mac Users Steered to Pricier Hotels

[Rivet]

Interesting little article.  I use PCs and Unix workstations.  I wonder what would happen when using the latter? 

On Orbitz, Mac Users Steered to Pricier Hotels

Orbitz Worldwide Inc. (OWW) has found that people who use Apple Inc.'s (AAPL) Mac computers spend as much as 30% more a night on hotels, so the online travel agency is starting to show them different, and sometimes costlier, travel options than Windows visitors see.

The Orbitz effort, which is in its early stages, demonstrates how tracking people's online activities can use even seemingly innocuous information—in this case, the fact that customers are visiting Orbitz.com from a Mac—to start predicting their tastes and spending habits.

Orbitz executives confirmed that the company is experimenting with showing different hotel offers to Mac and PC visitors, but said the company isn't showing the same room to different users at different prices. They also pointed out that users can opt to rank results by price.

Orbitz found Mac users on average spend $20 to $30 more a night on hotels than their PC counterparts, a significant margin given the site's average nightly hotel booking is around $100, chief scientist Wai Gen Yee said. Mac users are 40% more likely to book a four- or five-star hotel than PC users, Mr. Yee said, and when Mac and PC users book the same hotel, Mac users tend to stay in more expensive rooms.

"We had the intuition, and we were able to confirm it based on the data," Orbitz Chief Technology Officer Roger Liew said.

...

[Frank]

Ah-ha.  So dats why the price for dat place I went was so high.

[TeacherSmurf]

The title of the article is misleading, they are actually using a practical application mathematical statistics and probability. 

Here is your math lesson for today.    

They show the same hotels with the same prices on both PC and Mac lists, the difference is the order in which they are shown.  In other words, a hotel that is seven down on a PC list is three down on the Mac list.  This is unless you tell it to order cheapest first, then the order will be the same.  The reason is statistical data gathered from the hotel reservations studied, as well as by Orbitz reservations. 

*Side note: This would not really be considered bias data.  They didn't care what type of room was rented, (they didn't have a vested interest) the room was already sold.  They were looking for a pattern (Where do PC users tend to stay?  Where do Mac users tend to stay?), using raw data.  This is different than Wrigley saying that chewing gum helps math scores.  They had a vested interest in the outcome, (wanted to prove gum was good) therefore it is bias.     

What they found (according to the article) was that Mac users were more likely to stay at a more expensive hotel and even when they booked a cheaper hotel they were more likely to stay in a more expensive room.  Therefore, Orbitz changed the order of the hotels/rooms, so it was more likely that Mac users would find the type of hotel and room they (other Mac users) tend to prefer.  It is kinda like Amazon, Netflix, or Ebay with their section of you may like this also, because other people who are interested in the same stuff as you are looking at do.  Of course those are not always right, just a Mac users won't all pick the more expensive places, but statistically it is more likely they will.