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Towards optimal experimentation in online systems

The Unofficial Google Data Science Blog

If $Y$ at that point is (statistically and practically) significantly better than our current operating point, and that point is deemed acceptable, we update the system parameters to this better value. Crucially, it takes into account the uncertainty inherent in our experiments.

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New Thinking, Old Thinking and a Fairytale

Peter James Thomas

Of course it can be argued that you can use statistics (and Google Trends in particular) to prove anything [1] , but I found the above figures striking. King was a wise King, but now he was gripped with uncertainty. – Gartner 2007. “60-70% Source: Google Trends. – CIO.com 2010. “61% 61% of acquisition programs fail”.

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The Lean Analytics Cycle: Metrics > Hypothesis > Experiment > Act

Occam's Razor

Remember that the raw number is not the only important part, we would also measure statistical significance. Circle of Friends was a social community built atop Facebook that launched in 2007. They might deal with uncertainty, but they're not random. The result? By 2011, the company had 20 full-time photographers on staff.

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Changing assignment weights with time-based confounders

The Unofficial Google Data Science Blog

For example, imagine a fantasy football site is considering displaying advanced player statistics. A ramp-up strategy may mitigate the risk of upsetting the site’s loyal users who perhaps have strong preferences for the current statistics that are shown. One reason to do ramp-up is to mitigate the risk of never before seen arms.

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Measuring Validity and Reliability of Human Ratings

The Unofficial Google Data Science Blog

Editor's note : The relationship between reliability and validity are somewhat analogous to that between the notions of statistical uncertainty and representational uncertainty introduced in an earlier post. But for more complicated metrics like xRR, our preference is to bootstrap when measuring uncertainty.

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The trinity of errors in applying confidence intervals: An exploration using Statsmodels

O'Reilly on Data

Because of this trifecta of errors, we need dynamic models that quantify the uncertainty inherent in our financial estimates and predictions. Practitioners in all social sciences, especially financial economics, use confidence intervals to quantify the uncertainty in their estimates and predictions.

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Estimating causal effects using geo experiments

The Unofficial Google Data Science Blog

Statistical power is traditionally given in terms of a probability function, but often a more intuitive way of describing power is by stating the expected precision of our estimates. This is a quantity that is easily interpretable and summarizes nicely the statistical power of the experiment. Cambridge, 2007. In the U.S.,