You know how political polls always mention a "margin of error" of so many percentage points? So Candidate X may be 3 percent up in the polls, but that's actually "a statistical dead heat." Well, the technology research world needs some discipline like this, because too many research firms have gotten lazy and are playing it fast and loose with small sample sizes. Of course I realize we all snoozed through statistics and don't want to revisit that heavy math stuff (chi square, null hypotheses, Type 1 errors, and so on). But I keep getting research reports that make highly specific claims, with an air of learned authority, that turn out to be based on such a small sample size that the results are very likely skewed by chance (or "fooled by randomness," as in the title of a current math-geek bestseller).
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