Re:p-Hacking and False Discovery in A/B Testing
by tomrod on Sunday July 22, 2018 @09:45AM
(#17586703)
[1] is what I do a lot of discovery on in my own work. The complexity of the digital domain to the sales funnel, as well as the increased reach to new populations, makes simple A/B testing inadequate for accurate causal analysis. I think BigCorp has beneficial scale benefits here.
[2] I've only seen massive product movement when the analysts and idea folks work together. I've never seen an idea wonk hit the bullseye contrary to simple economic theory/reasoning on their customer target.
1. you see a random SKU spiking for n month in a row - good, keep stocking it, maybe even spend few adwords vouchers on it. BUT the fact that nobody in the company readily knows the nature of such spike is already an indication that the business fails at understanding its market.
2. Never in my career, I saw any of "coffee divination" level ideas coming from analysts ever being "life changing" for a company. I been through a number companies spending money on "algorithmic optimisation service" for banner ads of their clients. Yes, the "optimised" banners did score progressively more clicks with time, yet a single full time designer who was hired alongside the "optimiser" company could be scoring more clicks and purchases - without any input from any kind of data analysis