

Trust your data, not your gut - bentlegen
http://www.guestlistapp.com/blog/2010/08/13/trust-your-data/

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nostrademons
No. _Pay attention_ to your data, _then_ trust your gut.

There's a bunch of research that suggests that our unconscious mind is much
better at making sense out of a large number of contradictory signals than our
conscious mind is. If you blindly follow the data, you'll end up following
whichever piece of data was in your mind at the time you made the decision.
Instead, you want to absorb that data, let it affect your gut reactions, and
then make a decision based on _everything_ you know about the product and
market.

You do, of course, have to "prime the pump" by seeking out information,
particularly information that contradicts the assumptions you already hold.
But you want to incorporate that information into everything else you know,
not immediately take action because of it.

~~~
il
Very true. My thought process for this has been "trust, but verify". Trust
your gut, give it a try, and then see if the data confirms your gut reaction.

I specialize in marketing, and frequently I have to commit large sums of money
to media buys without any hard data about whether the traffic will convert or
not(beyond basic, vague demographic info). I have to make a gut decision about
the quality of traffic coming from a particular site/campaign, and then wait
for conversion data to come in before finding out if I was right.

I found that as I gained more experience doing this, and my unconscious
absorbed more and more data from past campaigns, I got a lot better at those
gut decisions.

Now, most of the time, I can look at any site or traffic source and estimate
somewhat accurately how valuable that traffic is and make a quick gut decision
about whether it's worth investing in. In the absence of hard data, being able
to make these quick gut decisions is invaluable.

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sdh
unless you have no data. in that case, start with your gut.

