There could be a way to know if Jasmine is a member of the NPD group... If ioi knows the IP of every user who has posted here, he could make a whois (http://www.arin.net/whois/) of Jasmine's IP, and check if it is within a range of IPs asigned to the NPD Group, or asigned to the zone where the company is headquarted (Port Washington, NY).

...

Can you do it ioi?

*goes to whois to look for info*

Hey, if you put "NPD" on whois, it gives you the IP ranges for the NPD Group. Here they are:

 Do any of these coincide with Jasmine's?

yeah, the stuff you take is useful, i didn't say they're not. my point is, one would need to re-examine one's career path doing an MBA for the sake of learning these things.  it's absolutely about getting a GREAT job.

 by the way, here a question for you (a serious one): i've always wondered when somebody asks me this question in an interview how i would answer.  say one has "determined" that certain things do trigger crashes.  how can it that knowledge have any predictive value?  you cannot time those events, and you cannot accurately predict how long it takes the market to respond or recover (essentially the criticism of many conclusions in the emerging field of econophysics). 

the only good answer i can think of is that at least you have some mental preparedness for it, but action-wise, there's little you can do.  i'm pretty bad at interview questions though.  can you think of a better answer?

 Wharton isn't Ivy League.

By your logic, you could also say: "VGChartz and NPD are comparable.  Both have methods for tracking sold items that include getting data directly from retailers."  

VGChartz provides a service of interest to more than just fans.  It provides a service -- near real time data gathered through measurement -- that many, many publishers are very interested in.  No offense to the NPD, but this is something the NPD cannot do even for paid members, apparently. 

As VGChartz becomes more popular, more resources will be made available to it and the accuracy will grow.  VGChartz doesn't have to concern itself with being more accurate than the NPD because it offers that which the NPD doesn't, and it does it for free.  VGChartz is introducing a new way for publishers to get and look at data, and it is putting the blocks in place for ground-breakingly accurate predictions, etc.

1) Ivy League is Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, U of Pennsylvania, and Yale.

2) Wharton is the business school at the University of Pennsylvania.

3) Therefore, Wharton is Ivy League.

And here I thought I was an ass, what, do you punch pregnant ladies in the stomach too?

Fine, I removed it to be nice.

But in the future he should consider taking the five seconds to Wikipedia "Ivy League business schools" before giving out false information.

 Yeah, it is.

You're right that you can't time the events nor can you predict how long it takes to respond/recover.  But if certain events do happen, since markets are usually efficient (strong, semi-strong, and weak), it's hard for one to consistently earn money (to short it if it crashes).  They may earn it couple times using analysis tools and with luck, but there's no way to earn money every single time.  But if we know normally what trigger things, even if you do not make instant money out of it, you can statistically analyze whether you should worry about it if you plan to invest <1 year, 5 years, 10 years.  The benefit I see is to give you a better position than other investors who do not have that information.  It can't guarantee you will earn lots with that info, but for sure, you should be able to invest in a better performing portfolio with less risk (beta) than the rest of the market, which is filled with casual investors as well.  That's how I would answer it.