I once heard that our senses primarily function as filters. I.e. our eyes only see by filtering out all sorts of other visual stimuli, our ears hear by filterin

I once heard that our senses primarily function as filters. I.e. our eyes only see by filtering out all sorts of other visual stimuli, our ears hear by filtering out other noises, etc... That means that we are only capturing a "tiny sliver" of whats actually happening around us. If we only keep this small detail in mind we can be sure that lack of evidence is never proof of anything and that any evidence we do see can only be used to find the most probable of competing hypotheses and its diagnosticity should always be considered. (i.e. fever might mean you are sick but has no diagnostic value to what particular ailment you have since its consistent with other possibilities.) Same goes for using bounce rate as a metric for web analysis...its diagnostic value on its own doesnt tell us much, but with other context, like time on site and conversion goal of site (i.e. a phone call conversion will register as a bounce if they dont navihate elsewhere.) It can tell us a lot.