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Rough summary of the argument: When you need to make a decision, use the data you have available to make the one most consistent with achieving your goal. Also,

Rough summary of the argument: When you need to make a decision, use the data you have available to make the one most consistent with achieving your goal. Also, the plural of anecdote is not data. ...however... He misses the fact that it can be very hard to gather a sufficient sample of data for a complex set of variables. If you are designing a web site there are literally hundreds of choices to make. You can't reasonably expect to test all of your decisions before making them, or else you will be paralyzed by delay. This leaves you with a second option of mocking up a couple of choices and see which ones are liked best, leaving you potentially with the best of a bad bunch. Or, my preference, option three: Pick a couple of design champions who will tear any design to shreds and make you really justify your choices in terms of work flow and user interaction. Generally you can assume that you aren't stupid, and you can figure out the right choices to make, however you won't always notice you need to do so unless you are being forced to justify your decisions by a grumpy critic.

jfarmer 19y ago
Hrm, do you think my article was too long? Anyhow, yes, you can make arbitrarily complex measurements. The point was more human than technical: some data is better than none, even if it's not fine-grained. It results in fewer pointless arguments and better decisions overall.
- apathy 19y ago
  some data is better than none, even if it's not fine-grained. Not necessarily. If the features of your small data sample are unrepresentative or poorly analyzed, you run the risk of distorting your priors and making a poorer decision than that expected by chance alone. We can chew the fat on this one for a very, very long time :-)
  - jfarmer 19y ago
    Ok, you're right. I'm a mathematician by training so these technical concerns don't escape me. Still, I tried to keep my point constrained to those situations where you don't run into decisions not easily resolved in the manner I described. Sure, if you're wading into a new market, old models or assumptions might be incorrect. Or if you need to make a decision now and don't have time to gather data your intuition and savvy are going to be instrumental. But for most day-to-day, pedestrian decisions around software, web development, and business there's plenty of data that will tell you whether you should zig or zag.

jfarmer 19y ago

Hrm, do you think my article was too long? Anyhow, yes, you can make arbitrarily complex measurements. The point was more human than technical: some data is better than none, even if it's not fine-grained. It results in fewer pointless arguments and better decisions overall.

apathy 19y ago
some data is better than none, even if it's not fine-grained. Not necessarily. If the features of your small data sample are unrepresentative or poorly analyzed, you run the risk of distorting your priors and making a poorer decision than that expected by chance alone. We can chew the fat on this one for a very, very long time :-)
- jfarmer 19y ago
  Ok, you're right. I'm a mathematician by training so these technical concerns don't escape me. Still, I tried to keep my point constrained to those situations where you don't run into decisions not easily resolved in the manner I described. Sure, if you're wading into a new market, old models or assumptions might be incorrect. Or if you need to make a decision now and don't have time to gather data your intuition and savvy are going to be instrumental. But for most day-to-day, pedestrian decisions around software, web development, and business there's plenty of data that will tell you whether you should zig or zag.