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Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven

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Re: Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven

#161

Post by int_19h »

throw_nbvc1234 wrote: post #147
int_19h wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to imply that expertise-driven design gave us Vista and Win7 while the data-driven one gave us Win8, Win10, and Win11. It's notable that, from this list, Win7 seems to be the only one that people genuinely liked.

Define "people". Tech people, people/customers in general, some other group such as shareholders? Both your point and the point your responding to could be true at the same time both anecdotally and/or in the data. Anecdotes are probably just another form of "expert opinions"

It's entirely an anecdote, but from my experience, Win7 was broadly accepted as a good iteration among techies and non-techies both.

As a software engineer, I actually find a lot more to be excited about in Win10+ thanks to WSL and other such things. But I don't hear my acquaintances who are non-techies being positive about anything from Win8 on.

Re: Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven

#162

Post by ekianjo »

tlarkworthy wrote: post #82
ekianjo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talking to people is not going to help you either. You end up getting a lot of noise and making sense of what you hear is difficult. When you keep probing you will get to hear stuff thats not really critical and just often made up because you ask too many questions. Classical trap of market research.

ycombinator startup school disagrees and says it's one of the two CRITICAL things founders must have a hand in. Of course you need to interpret it but its incredibly important and I do not think you really know what you are talking about. https://www.ycombinator.com/library/6g-how-to-talk-to-users Almost all the major fails I have seen in my career have been some derivative of not understanding your users.

> I do not think you really know what you are talking about.

Nice strawman. I have never said to never talk to your users, but to pretend that using data is meaningless and you should follow some bullshit and vague "good argument" instead is just sheer foolishness.

Re: Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven

#163

Post by ekianjo »

bogdanoff_2 wrote: post #76
ekianjo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talking to people is not going to help you either. You end up getting a lot of noise and making sense of what you hear is difficult. When you keep probing you will get to hear stuff thats not really critical and just often made up because you ask too many questions. Classical trap of market research.

Talking to customers might uncover some things you haven't even thought about.

The same thing is true with pure data analysis. Unless you have never analyzed data in depth in your life, that should be pretty obvious.

Re: Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven

#164

Post by ekianjo »

jzb wrote: post #83
ekianjo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talking to people is not going to help you either. You end up getting a lot of noise and making sense of what you hear is difficult. When you keep probing you will get to hear stuff thats not really critical and just often made up because you ask too many questions. Classical trap of market research.

You have to do both. You can't just look at data & you can't just talk to users / customers without looking back at data.

of course, but then following "good argument" is just ignoring data in the original article, which is nonsense.

Re: Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven

#165

Post by ekianjo »

cbtacy wrote: post #145
ekianjo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talking to people is not going to help you either. You end up getting a lot of noise and making sense of what you hear is difficult. When you keep probing you will get to hear stuff thats not really critical and just often made up because you ask too many questions. Classical trap of market research.

Very dated thinking. Suggest you read up on Lean Customer Development (for example).

been doing product design most of my life in top corporations, so I'll pass on your opinion.

Re: Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven

#166

Post by Too »

k__ wrote: post #72
shubb wrote: post #35

The related problem that I see actually more often is the "you don't have big data" problem. You know, in data science, you see people spending hours writing pandas scripts that replicate a few clicks in excel for a one of analysis. You see datasets of a few gigabytes being processed with spark when SQL would be fine. You see ML techniques being thrown at questions that could be answered simply and reliably with basi…

Would you say the big data threshold moves every year? That would explain why people think a <1TB is big data.

I don’t think many give much thought to what it really means. They just use the term because it sounds cool, either to themselves or to their superiors. Same as with Machine learning.

Re: Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven

#167

Post by einpoklum »

int_19h wrote: post #139
klenwell wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They find, time and time again, in all sorts of fields, that extremely parsimonious models like equal-weighted linear regression of one or two predictors outperform expert judgment. I came across this in Thinking Fast and Slow. Kahneman was a big fan of Meehl and restates the point: The important conclusion from this research is that an algorithm that is constructed on the back of an envelope is often good enough t…

It seems to imply that expertise-driven design gave us Vista and Win7 while the data-driven one gave us Win8, Win10, and Win11. It's notable that, from this list, Win7 seems to be the only one that people genuinely liked.

Expertise-driven design did not give us any Windows operating system. I don't believe that MS Windows is the kind of system OS experts would design.

But - perhaps you're referring to the user interface? Or just the kernel? Or the driver mechanism?

Re: Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven

#168

Post by wtetzner »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #144
wtetzner wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even wise people likely follow the incentives. What is wise about doing something that your employer doesn’t reward in exchange for doing something that they will reward?

It's wise to do what's morally right, regardless of the consequences.

Sure, but I guess my point is that it's not clear that going against the wishes of your employer is what's morally right.
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