4 ms·
8 month ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2831455 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2831455 (65 comments)
by judofyr 15y ago
8 month ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2831455 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2831455 (65 comments)
- noelwelsh 15y agoWell, maybe we can add to that discussion. I say that as author of the blog post, and the founder of Myna, which is an implementation of the ideas described therein. And yes, I'm totally hoping this post stays on the front-page so we get more hits. (Myna is: http://mynaweb.com/ http://mynaweb.com/) Now that Myna is out (though still in beta) I'm super interested in discussing it with anyone who is interested.
- swah 15y agoDid you choose at the bird image in your front page using Mina? (I'm asking because normally we see successfull people in that place and supposedly it converts well).
- noelwelsh 15y agoNo we haven't. In a normal day we don't get enough traffic to make optimisation worthwhile. Once we've refined the offering (we have a good number of beta testers) we'll start focusing on growth and optimising the page.
- josscrowcroft 15y agoI dunno why, but I do feel a Content Optimisation tool's homepage could be a little more ... content optimised. Having said that, loved the article, fascinating stuff!
- noelwelsh 15y agoI agree. It is kinda embarrassing, but we have limited time and have to focus where we think we'll get the most bang-for-buck.
- aresant 15y agoNoel - Very interested in learning more, my email address is in my profile, drop me a line would like to connect you w/somebody on my team to assess further.
- hartror 15y agoAnd as coffeemug points out on that post as you (generally) cannot guarantee the independence of the variables you are changing to influence user behaviour. This makes the multiarmed bandit unsuited to the task the article espouses.
- noelwelsh 15y agoThen it also makes A/B testing unsuited to the task... Independence is a useful assumption, as it allows more tractable algorithms. It is a correct assumption? No, obviously not, but it close enough to correct that the results you get from it are good. People have made plenty of money using A/B testing, which also makes an independence assumption, and people will make plenty of money using bandit algorithms. The only difference is they'll make more money using bandit algs.
- pgroves 15y agoThis is true in any practical machine learning problem and it doesn't cause as much of a problem as theoreticians would have you believe. Having independent variables, or detecting and accounting for all dependencies, will typically lead to a better result. But when there are dependencies it merely degrades accuracy. It does not destroy the accuracy altogether. If you were to try to address every possible independence assumption in practice, you'd never get through a research project, let alone get a real product out the door as this company has done. [Edit: syntax]