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> Also, I work in this field and I will just say that people _do_ behave differently based on traffic source: i.e. users coming from Facebook behave alike, but
by throwawaymath 7y ago
> Also, I work in this field and I will just say that people _do_ behave differently based on traffic source: i.e. users coming from Facebook behave alike, but different than traffic from Reddit who act similarly to each other.
Out of curiosity, what is your hypothesis for explaining this difference in behavior? Would you say it's primarily due to differing contexts in which a link is posted, or differing populations on each platform? Or maybe these both contribute about equally?
Stated another way: would you expect the same individual to behave differently coming from Facebook versus coming from reddit, if they happen to be a user of both?
- orasis 7y agoDifferent demographics, different intent, and different mental context all play a factor.
- parksy 7y agoNot a statistician by any means, but could traffic source be a factor that's evaluated alongside conversion by a bandit algorithm when calculating the chance to show a particular option? Or other factors as well (detected device capabilities, users location, etc?) These could just be weighting factors so instead of a single % chance per option, every time there's a successful interaction the victory is spread across the factors for that option. New users could be shown the option where the chance for each option is weighted by the factors they match. Is this a valid approach or would it introduce some kind of selection bias?
- orasis 7y agoYes, of course. You can use a contextual MAB and include the traffic source in the context. Contextual MABs are much more complicated and expensive to implement though.