Experimental Mind: how A/B testing can (and can’t) improve your headline writing

Hey friends, and a warm welcome to the 23 new subscribers!

Yesterday I went for a flash visit to the Conversion Hotel conference to give my talk on ‘Expanding Experimentation’. It was great to glimpse so many familiar faces again. I planned to spend the full three days there, but decided that wasn’t a wise thing to do amid a new corona wave.

In this edition of the Experimental Mind newsletter I have 4 articles and 19 job opportunities (including two where we can work together, remotely).

As always all links are handpicked by me, so you don’t have to. Enjoy!


🔎 What I’ve been reading this week

1. P-values and surprising results

In response to his earlier post about misunderstanding of p-values, Ronny Kohavi now wrote a note explaining p-values, and the intuition behind the application of Bayes Rules. He is open to feedback.

2. Summary of MIT CODE conference
2. Summary of MIT CODE conferencemedium.com

Short summary on the MIT Conference on Digital Experimentation (MIT CODE):

“This community has made substantial recent advances in making these methods both more practical and more theoretically rigorous.”

3. How A/B testing can (and can’t) improve your headline writing
3. How A/B testing can (and can’t) improve your headline writingwww.niemanlab.org

“We found, surprisingly, that no single feature of a headline’s writing style makes much of a difference in forecasting success.”

4. Free ebook: Psychology for A/B testing

Ruben de Boer released this free ebook to help you apply psychology in your A/B testing program.

🚀 Job opportunities

Are you looking for a new opportunity? These are this week’s featured jobs:

Or check the other 15 open roles from companies like Netflix, Adidas, Gitlab, Stripe, Just Eat, Skyscanner, Lego and Spotify.

Are you hiring? Post your open roles to the job board. Readers of this newsletters can post for free, by using this coupon code at the last step: SUBSCRIBER200

📅 Upcoming events

This is a running list of upcoming events:

💬 Quote of the week

“Tell me how you measure me and I will tell you how I will behave. If you measure me in an illogical way, do not complain about illogical behavior.” — Eli Goldratt

😉 Fun of the week

[tweet https://twitter.com/ajamesgreen/status/1460999686622482439]

🔁 Any feedback?

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🙏 Thanks for reading

If you’re enjoying the Experimental Mind newsletter you can buy me a coffee or beer. Thanks to the 12 people who already did it. Much appreciated.

And share this email with a friend or colleague. I would love this community of experimenters to grow. You can point them here to subscribe.

Have a great week — and keep experimenting.

Kevin