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That's definitely one of these things you have to learn as part of running a business. You tend to over-index on things you can measure and under-index on thing
by sskates 9y ago
That's definitely one of these things you have to learn as part of running a business. You tend to over-index on things you can measure and under-index on things that you can't. After a while you realize there's a lot more randomness in what happens than you might expect and so you can't weight any particular data point too highly. If you look at patio11's blogging of Bingo Card Creator, you'll notice he has little idea as to why his userbase grows or shrinks any particular year: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/12/29/bingo-card-creator-and-other-stuff-year-in-review-2012/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/12/29/bingo-card-creator-and-o... And he's one of the most sophisticated product analytics experts out there!
- panarky 9y agoThe same principle applies to other information. I used to spend a lot of time reading news stories and checking stock prices every day. Turns out almost all of that is random noise that doesn't add up to actionable patterns. Better to ignore the hourly and daily stuff and look at longer timeframes with long-form articles and books. Even fiction can be pretty good at identifying real macro patterns.
- jbreckmckye 9y ago> You tend to over-index on things you can measure and under-index on things that you can't. I am going to steal this. I am going to deploy it in one of this morning's meetings and pass it off as my own.
- mrec 9y agoIt's basically the same as the streetlight effect, isn't it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect