X-Message-Number: 1177
Date: Sun, 6 Sep 92 11:54:09 +0200
From:  (David Stodolsky)
Subject: CRYONICS: Growth of cryonics

Platt (Why cryonics? Responses to the survey. _Cryonics_, 13(8), 12-17)
concludes "Personnel contact still seems the best recruitment tool at
this time, which suggests that if we want to achieve continued growth,
we need to change our methods of finding new members (15)."  This is not
obvious. If each member recruits a new member per unit of time, then
sustained exponential growth occurs.

On page 19, Whelan states, "... most of the suspension members of Alcor
now has have been members for three years or less ..." This suggests
that each current member recruits a new member about every three years,
leading to a yearly growth rate of about 30 percent, which is adequate
for, and controllable by, a high tech company.

Another conclusion, that is possible, is that personal contact is
working effectively and effort should be concentrated on making it
easier for current members to recruit new members. This could be done by
better educational materials or reducing the monetary barriers to
membership, for example.

The type of data presented in the article is amenable to Response Based
Sampling analysis. This was worked on a lot by the transportation
economics people at UC Berkeley around 1977 to answer questions like,
"If we only interview people waiting at a bus stop, what can we conclude
about the population of potential bus riders (even those who never take
a bus)."

I am testing a new stat pack soon. I could try it out on this or any
other data of interest.

David S. Stodolsky                Messages: + 45 46 75 77 11 x 24 41
Department of Computer Science                 Tel: + 45 31 95 92 82
Bldg. 20.1, Roskilde University Center        Internet: 
Post Box 260, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark        Fax: + 45 46 75 42 01

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