On: Optimizely Statistics Engine

[will_lam]

Interesting that Optimizely is positioning themselves as the over arching discipline as "Statistics reinvented for the internet age". My guess is to parry against the onslaught of A/B testing and optimization platforms for web and mobile from all directions. Of course with their stable of PHD statisticians and data scientists, Optimizely is the answer.

[mziel → will_lam]

"Statistics reinvented for the internet age" looks like a cheap knock-off of the long known bayesian statistics.

[darkxanthos → mziel]

It's actually sequential testing which is not necessarily Bayesian. Also, it's not a cheap knock off. Just another way of getting to an answer.

[mziel → darkxanthos]

Bayesian updating of the posterior? Or if you prefer frequentist algorithms for online learning of classifiers?

Not trying to pick a fight, just as a statistitian/ML developer I've seen the same things be reinvented and renamed so many times.

[jmalicki → mziel]

No, if you read their technical paper, it's frequentist sequential testing with false discovery rate control, which is a fairly recent development (I mean, 25 years old is pretty new in statistics).

http://pages.optimizely.com/rs/optimizely/images/stats_engin...

[dlss → jmalicki]

I think all OP is trying to point out is that it either agrees with bayesian methods or it's wrong... so at best it's not materially new, and at worst it's using questionable assumptions.

[GFK_of_xmaspast → dlss]

"it either agrees with bayesian methods or it's wrong"

This kind of faith-based statistics is pure ideology.

[thinkmoore → will_lam]

It's also not clear what has been "reinvented," unless of course you mean re-inventing things that have already been invented.