Readit Newssamd commented on I was skeptical of unions. Then I joined one vox.com/policy-and-politi... · Posted by u/throw0101a
This post got flagged off the homepage almost as soon as it made it there.
samd commented on Poverty in America: Greater Than Statistics Indicate bloomberg.com/opinion/art... · Posted by u/occamschainsaw
> Having an iPhone isn't inexplicable. You can finance or lease a phone for $30-$40 a month. And given the extraordinary advantages having a smartphone provides, it would be inexplicable if they did not do so.
It's inexplicable when there are alternative phones available for 1/10 the cost. Why would you choose to take on a $40/mo expense when you could buy an entire fully functioning low end Android phone for $40?
> And so on and so on. I pay more upfront to save a ton down the line.
But my example is that I'm paying less upfront than my neighbors. They are the ones buying iPhones and name brand cereal with SNAP while I'm over here using cheap phones and eating generic brand cereal. It just seems paradoxical is all I'm saying.
How much do you have to save on your phone bill before you can buy a house?
The difference between a cheap Android and an old iPhone isn't going to be enough to buy a home, or provide food for the family every day, or pay for (or off) an education, or pay for medical expenses, or buy a reliable car, or any of the other truly expensive things that those with wealth take for granted.
Judging the spending habits of the poor on small luxuries is a common way we shift the blame of poverty onto the poor. It allows the rich to feel better about themselves and about the society they've built.
samd commented on Conservation of Intent: why A/B tests aren’t as effective as they look andrewchen.co/conservatio... · Posted by u/dedalus
I could not disagree with this more. I remember vividly having this "low-intent" vs "high-intent" debate at Thumbtack, when we rolled out changes that A/B tests showed increased conversion (by a lot), but some people in the company thought the changes were ugly and "off-brand" and argued they brought in the wrong type of customers. So we ran the test again that we knew raised conversion by a lot, and then followed the 2 cohorts of customers and watched their behavior. The control group vs the 10% more from whatever the test was that increased conversion. They behaved exactly the same. They came back again at the same rates. They made the same amount of profit (per customer). Their response rates to emails were the same. They closed jobs at the same rates. As far as we could tell they were identical.
I have to admit I was a little surprised too, but for our business it didn't seem this "high-intent" vs "low-intent" distinction existed. And with that out of the way we continued to optimize conversion rates, and our revenue continued to go up.
Every company is different so I don't want to generalize too much, but if somebody tells me they ran an A/B test that said some key flow went up 10%, but then afterwards the traffic/revenue/whatever didn't go up 10%, I think the most likely candidate is bad test design. Humans are really good at rigging A/B tests to produce wrong results in their favor. I guarantee every single company who isn't maniacal about A/B testing does at least one of the following:
- Uses a tool to grade A/B tests that isn't statistically sound
- Let's people check tests too often and allows them to stop the test when it hits a good result
- Running a test with a lot of similar variations and cherry picking the best one
- Doesn't plan for enough traffic to detect the percentage of change their test is likely to produce
All of these create the potential for the perceived gains of the A/B test not matching up with real world result.
I'm not saying the distinction between "low-intent" and "high-intent" customers doesn't exist, but it is fairly easy to test for. Do that test for your business and see if that distinction exists. But don't use it as some magical explanation for why your A/B tests aren't producing the results you want as this article suggests.
So damn true, it's so difficult to get statistically significant A/B test results, and the popular tools actively lead you astray. It's rare enough for a startup to have the traffic to meaningfully get results on their homepage before the heat death of the universe, let alone random landing or in-app pages.
I'd recommend anyone reading this who does or wants to do A/B tests read: https://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-run-an-ab-test.html It was one of the trickiest lessons I had to learn.
Once you realize you need to set your sample size in advance, you actually have to do the math to figure out the traffic you'll need. That's when reality hits you.
samd commented on The Tech Industry’s Gender-Discrimination Problem newyorker.com/magazine/20... · Posted by u/jdblair
Four hours without comment, not many upvotes, and clearly a flag or two. Hacker News doesn't want to face the demons in its own industry.
Seems that nobody wants to know that the darling Tesla is rotten at the core. Culture comes from the top. It's ok to love the technology, to the love the cars, but hate the culture, hate the sexism. You don't have to be complicit in their discrimination just because you see electric vehicles as the future. Hold your heroes to higher standards.
samd commented on Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries insights.dice.com/2016/03... · Posted by u/replicatorblog
Do you have any data to provide that goes along with your statement that women don't get "these jobs and promotions in the first place"?
Are you being coy? I assume you know about the disparity in engineering jobs between men and women, particularly in management and executive roles, but are blaming this on something else. Say what you mean.
samd commented on Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries insights.dice.com/2016/03... · Posted by u/replicatorblog
That's good news if true, the women who make it and get promoted earn the same as their counterparts. Still lots of work to be done removing the barriers that keep them from getting these jobs and promotions in the first place.
samd commented on Retirement Nomads: Too poor to retire and too young to die graphics.latimes.com/reti... · Posted by u/uptown
Exceeding the speed limit isn't exclusive to the poor and downtrodden. Should fines for breaking the law be different for different incomes?
Edit: for those of you saying 'yes': who decides what is "fair"?
Absolutely. How is it just to punish one person with financial catastrophe while another with mild inconvenience for the same crime?
To summarize his arguments:
The universe is eternal, which means it has always and will always exist. If there is something that always exists, then it is impossible for there to be nothing. It is impossible for there to be nothing.
Not a very satisfactory answer. The interesting question just becomes: Why is the universe eternal? or Why does there exist an eternal universe at all?