Monday December 08, 2008

MVT That Matters I'll admit that the extent of my research on this topic consisted of stumbling across a blurb in Esquire Magazine somewhere between articles about the Best Steakhouse in America and the Sexiest Woman alive.  Nevertheless, learning about the research of Esther Duflo of MIT brought into interesting context for me the hot topic of MVT in Web Analytics.

Esther Duflo is a professor of economics at the Poverty Action Lab at MIT.  At the risk of oversimplifying her research, basically what she does is apply multivariate testing to economic aid for impoverished countries.  Paraphrasing Tim Heffernan's Esquire article, say you spend a million dollars in Africa supplying textbooks, or treating students for parasitic worms.  Which investment is more successful at improving academic performance?

Turns out the answer is treating for worms so that students attendance improves and thus they can learn more, even with outdated or no text books. 

To quote the Esquire article summarizing the aid problem, "When you apply for funds to keep your project going next year, all you can say is...money helps. So please give us more of it."  To address this problem, Professor Duflo and her team are applying data analysis to large scale, complicated economic and societal issues to cut through arguments over where funding for economic aid should be spent.

Sound familar?

So, if they can apply MVT for big problems like this that really matter, seems like running some simple A/B tests to improve my calls to action on my Web site  should be something I can pull off.
( Dec 08 2008, 08:44:08 AM MST ) Permalink Comments [1]