Remove 2012 Remove Experimentation Remove Statistics Remove Testing
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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. And we can keep repeating this approach, relying on intuition and luck. Why experiment with several parameters concurrently?

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To Balance or Not to Balance?

The Unofficial Google Data Science Blog

In an ideal world, experimentation through randomization of the treatment assignment allows the identification and consistent estimation of causal effects. A naïve way to solve this problem would be to compare the proportion of buyers between the exposed and unexposed groups, using a simple test for equality of means.

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Estimating causal effects using geo experiments

The Unofficial Google Data Science Blog

Similarly, we could test the effectiveness of a search ad compared to showing only organic search results. A geo experiment is an experiment where the experimental units are defined by geographic regions. Structure of a geo experiment A typical geo experiment consists of two distinct time periods: pretest and test.

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Unintentional data

The Unofficial Google Data Science Blog

1]" Statistics, as a discipline, was largely developed in a small data world. Yet when we use these tools to explore data and look for anomalies or interesting features, we are implicitly formulating and testing hypotheses after we have observed the outcomes. We must correct for multiple hypothesis tests.