
Ask HN: How to explain “Hypothesis” to a non science audience? - utkarsh_apoorva
Here&#x27;s my problem. Most of the teams, and startups I interact with, are working on Growth, and therefore conduct lots of experiments.<p>However, many of the team members do not really have a working idea of what&#x27;s a good experiment. This could be dangerous for their projects and efforts. This is more disheartening for me because my product deals with scientific growth experiments.<p>While after explaining it, they get it (they are pretty smart, usually), but I am sure there are many who don&#x27;t know and don&#x27;t know that they don&#x27;t know.<p>All online content on hypothesis seems to be pretty heavily worded. Which is good for rigour, but not useful when a 22 year old marketer is looking at it at 3 am in the morning.<p>So I have started to write a series and the very first article is here: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lightcat.io&#x2F;hypothesis<p>This is in a language that most people should understand (I think). Would love feedback and thoughts on this.<p>Do you think that scientific methods need to be explained in a manner that everyone gets it? And that there are not many resources out there for this? And whether the material I have written solves the problem.
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gus_massa
I'd try to explain them something more concrete, like A/B testing. There are
some nice articles written by patio11:

* " _Why You Don 't A/B Test... And How You Can Start This August_" [https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/why_you_d...](https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/why_you_do_not_ab_test) ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6161552](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6161552) | 119 points | Aug 5, 2013 | 56 comments)

* " _Dispatches From The A /B Testing Trenches_" [https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/ab_testin...](https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/ab_testing) ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12540590](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12540590) | 166 points | Sept 20, 2016 | 46 comments)

Also, a good Mythbuster marathon may be helpful, but it is more difficult to
explain as a business activity.

