socialmedian: Wanna be better with metrics? Watch more poker and less baseball.

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Wanna be better with metrics? Watch more poker and less baseball.

Submitted by Adamcohen from Google Reader

Nov 04, 2009

Summary

Both baseball and poker have been televising their World Series championships, and announcers for both frequently describe strategies and tactics based on the statistics of the games. Poker announcers base their commentary and discussion on the probabilities associated with a small number of key metrics, while baseball announcers barrage us with numbers that sound meaningful but that are often pure nonsense.

Similarly, today's web analytics give us the capability to track and report data on just about anything, but just because we can generate a number doesn't mean that number is meaningful to our business. In fact, reading meaning into meaningless numbers can cause us to make very bad decisions.

Don't get me wrong, I am a huge believer in making data-based decisions, in baseball, poker, and on our websites. But making good decisions is heavily dependent on using the right data and seeing the data in the right light. I sometimes worry that constant exposure to sports announcers' misreading and misappropriation of numbers is actually contributing to a misread

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