The fallacy of averages
A discussion with a portfolio company CFO reminded me that statistics are a dangerous thing and averages are misleading. “There are three types of lies — lies, damn lies, and statistics.” Most businesses analyze their performance using overly simplistic tools. For an extreme example, imagine a scenario where the average customer produces monthly recurring revenue […]
Design for your best customers, not your worst ones
When you’re startup is fortunate to have paying customers, it’s very tempting to evolve your product based on the feedback you receive from them. After all, isn’t that the best practice–to iterate based on customer feedback? The problem is, if you base what you do solely on the feedback that comes in from customers, you’re […]
Read before you share – otherwise it’s gossip
A rubbish post by Business Insider titled “This Survey Is Devastating For Microsoft: 42% Of Windows Users Plan To Switch To Apple” and a very dubious post by the New York Times titled “The Tablet Market Grows Cluttered” drew my attention today – the latter claimed that About 98 percent of Web traffic from tablets comes […]
Twitter stats redefined – now measuring true influence?
I had a small revelation the other day while on Twitter and chatting with Alan Berkson. As you may or may not known, I’m a self-proclaimed statishist, meaning that I really get excited by statistics, or stats for short I did a few calculations on 20 Twitter people, taking their latest 1,000 followers, and looking […]
Facebook Fan Page Impressions VS Actual Traffic to your Web Site
You have made the best ever Facebook fan page, and are getting just a whopping amazing amount of impressions on your posts to Facebook. All is wonderful; the audience loves you, but what about the actual click throughs? Here is what I am observing from…
Real Profitability Part I: The Big Three and Four
After last post about the wondrous differences between absolute statistics and relative statistics, I decided to do a post and show you what I carry in my back-pocket before attending an event where The Big Three (GOOG, MSFT and AAPL) and The Big Four (ORCL, SAP, IBM, HPQ) announce last year’s figures and achievements. It […]
Where Idiots Get Their Data: Other Idiots (Don’t Let it Happen in Your Company)
Bad data and bad conclusions are the scourge of “the internets” — don’t let it happen in your company, too.
73.6% of all Statistics are Made Up
How to Interpret Analyst Reports The headlines in the media are filled with that latest stats. Stats sell. The stats are often quoted from the latest reports. People then parrot them around like they’re fact when most of them are complete bullsh*t. People throw them around at cocktail parties. Often when they do I throw […]
