

Lemonade Stand Operator A/B Tests His Attire - Suits FTW - mhb
http://www.kens5.com/video/featured-videos/Meet-Ethan-the-worlds-most-successful-lemonade-salesman-91511864.html

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maxklein
Get over this A/B nonsense. That is not an A/B test. An A/B test is not some
path to riches or some rigorous way to prove something scientifically - it's
an unimportant way to prove a hypothesis when you have a very large user
number.

It's the hypothesis or the idea that makes the difference, not the A/B test!
A/B tests will tell you nothing you did not already know, they will just PROVE
it if you need to convince someone else.

A/B tests are really the ultimate in pseudo-science. Yes, they make sense for
some narrow use-cases (like googles frontpage), but making a button bigger?
That's not an A/B test - you already knew a bigger button will result in more
click-throughs, you don't need a test to show you that.

And this article with some dude testing out another outfit? You want to call
that an A/B test? It's not - it's just some guy trying out another outfit to
see if it works. How is this a test? There is nothing rigorous or scientific
about this.

If you NEED to do a test, then do an actual test, and factor in everything.
But coming up with a hypothesis based off experience or something you read on
some blog is not an A/B test. It's just an improvement to your site.

Stop pretending that this is science. It's not. It's intuition, and calling it
an A/B test will not make the process any more 'scientific'.

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ElliotH
While its not science - it is a perfectly valid application of scientific
method on a small scale. He's got a variable he measures - the money he has
coming in, and a single variable he changes - whether he wears a suit or a
tshirt.

To make it more reliable he should have repeated it several times.

If he had done that then I don't see why this is an invalid way to prove his
hyothesis.

~~~
reduxredacted
Also completely unscientific:

If I saw a kid out in front of his grandmother's house in the summer wearing a
suit selling lemon-aid, I'd purchase it and probably add a tip:

\- It's the middle of summer _[1]_ and the kid is serious enough that he's
willing to sweat it out in a suit. That's an attitude I'd respect.

That would be my instant, gut reaction, walking by that stand for the first
time.

 _[1] I'm assuming he's not selling lemon-aid while attending school_

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maudineormsby
To be fair, this wasn't an A/B test. If it was actually an A/B test, he would
be isolating one variable against a control. In this case, the variable he
didn't control was time - maybe he made $5 on the day he wore jeans because
the weather was bad or because he scowled at customers.

To be fair to the kid -

1) He's probably right about dressing the part. I wonder if he optimized; is a
suit the _best_ way to dress to increase Lemonade sales?

2) It's REALLY hard to isolate variables in this type of marketplace, even for
corporations. So, in lieu of a side by side A/B test, what he did shows a lot
of forethought for a teenager.

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cullenking
Wow, here's a dude that sells lemonade in a business suit, for seven years,
making decent money. And the only comments are criticizing the title of the
post? That's almost as hilarious as a dude in a suit selling lemonade in front
of his grandparents house.

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shalmanese
It's a great idea and I don't want to appear too critical but:

* Was he only wearing the t-shirt & jeans for one session? Was he sure that was what caused the effect? * $4000 in 7 years? The numbers don't really add up. He was out selling for 2 days a week for 7 years, that should be 700 sessions more or less. He really only made less than $10 a session on average?

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umtrey
He was likely in school for 9 of those months, so if you only have a quarter
to sell (13 weeks), that's 26 times per year, or 182 times overall. 20 bucks a
session at a lemonade stand is a HAUL.

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mkramlich
My guess is that the suit made him stick out more, visually, drawing more
attention. Getting a potential consumer's attention seems like one of the
biggest challenges in a world of things competing for everyone's attention.
The suit may have given him the edge.

