Experimental Mind: act like a scientist

Ready to lead a global experimentation program? As CRO Specialist at Randstad Global you will help countries validate insights, identify key areas for improvement and hypotheses for testing.

🔎 What I've been reading

We still over rely on gut instinct and personal experience, People need to think and act more like scientists and do these five things:

1. being a knowledgeable skeptic and question your assumptions

2. investigating anomalies—things that are unexpected or don’t look right

3. devising testable hypotheses that can be confirmed/disproved

4. running experiments that produce hard evidence

5. probing cause and effect.

Ronny Kohavi is writing a document outlining some important conditions for sharing A/B test results. Read it and share you comments.

📢 He is also hosting another class: cohort #4. He will teach you everything he knows about A/B testing in 5 two hour sessions. Subscribe via this link and you will receive a $50 Amazon gift card.

In this article Cassie Kozyrkov shares the first 3 out of 10 differences between amateurs and professional analysts.

Timothy Chan explains p-values.

An analysis by the Microsoft Experimentation Platform team where they evaluate 11 approaches to reduce false positive detection.

The even-split is a simple yet effective improvement to increase the statistical power of experiments.

Experiment Nation is organising another virtual conference. This is a great opportunity for aspiring presenters to get on 'stage'. Our space needs more fresh perspectives from people like you. Let me know if you need help with preparing. This could be anything: topic selection, slide design, overcoming feelings of imposter syndrome, etc.

I've put this new book on my reading list.

🚀 Job opportunities

All featured roles:

• Digital Analyst at RTL (Hilversum, NL)

• Webanalist at Kaartje2go (Zwolle, NL)

• Conversie Optimalisatie Specialist at Kaartje2go (Zwolle)

• Conversie Optimalisatie Lead at Kaartje2go (Zwolle, NL)

• CRO Specialist at Randstad Global (Amsterdam, NL)

Also checkout the job board for more open roles in the field of experimentation, CRO and analytics.

📅 Upcoming events

Upcoming events in the next months:

• 21 April: Emerce Conversion (Maarsen, Netherlands)

• 27 April: Experimentation Elite (London)

• 🆕 28 April: Test Business Ideas by David J Bland (virtual)

• 14 May, MeasureCamp (London)

• 18-20 May: Measuring Behavior (Krakow)

• 19 May: MeasureBowling (12+ cities)

• 21 May: MeasureCamp (Amsterdam)

• 31 May: Accelerating Innovation with A/B Testing (virtual)

• 8-9 June: Advances with Field Experiments (Chicago)

• 9-10 June: NeuroPsychoEconomics (Lille)

• 15 June: Growth Marketing SUMMIT (Frankfurt am Main)

• 16-18 June: Marketing Science Conference (virtual)

• 23-24 June: Outperform Conference (Amsterdam)

• 25 June: MeasureCamp (Paris)

See the full overview of events to find 15+ other events and conferences for you and your team.

💬 Quote of the week

“Great leaders challenge assumptions, run experiments, and follow the evidence." — Stefan Thomke and Gary W. Loveman

😉 Fun of the week

Product managers need to be multi-lingual. If you do not speak the language of the function you are interacting with, everything becomes more difficult. Conversations take longer. Alignment becomes tedious, if it ever happens. Stakeholders come back after a feature is launched with a list of complaints. The best PMs prevent these messes by speaking Corporatish, Marketindi, Salesian, Designese, Techugu, and Analytian.

☕ Thanks for reading

If you’re enjoying the Experimental Mind newsletter and want to say thank you? Buy me a coffee (or a beer). Or share this newsletter with a friend or colleague.

Have a great week — and keep experimenting.

Kevin