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Yes, but marketers don't really care about math. Only about the numbers!

You would expect a few hiccups and a steep learning curve when the product they are trying to buy is a bid for visibility on insanely complex networks of platforms using said rocket science to guess where one's mind is at.

Disclaimer: worked years in the space on the topic of performance, only one time ever have i seen an AB test correctly run and correctly understood by a client. Most requested false numbers because they couldn't understand the difference between branding, attribution and incremental sales. To be fair, neither could most anyone working in the field... Seems like that doesn't change too quick!

Yes, but marketers don't really care about math. Only about the numbers!

This is hilarious.

And sad. Same thing happens in data science now - people are happy to have any number regardless of correctness. They just need something to report on and keep the work going.

As long as data science remains subservient to Product, the inevitable result is cherry picking and post hoc rationalizing of some PM's intuition. To blame is the "embedded" model in which DS works within (and takes direction from) a cross functional team driven by a PM.

That famous saying known to those of us in scientific computing: The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers.

Hah, exactly what I was writing about here

https://www.jacquescorbytuech.com/writing/marketers-addicted...

Hi, please don't do this. If the comments become just replies saying "I wrote about this on my blog!" with a link, they're unreadable. If you summarized your thoughts and posted it as its own comment, without a self-promotional link, I'm sure it would be very well received.

Sounds fair! Thanks for the feedback. The article did spur an interesting discussion previously on HN when I published it but seems relevant again given the ongoing discussion.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25016532

This is one of those things that isn't a big deal in isolated instances, but becomes an issue if it gets more prevalent, so it's always hard to know when/if to even say anything :)

The other problem is that the worst offenders are the ones least likely to respond to getting or seeing this sort of nudge, so there is some adverse selection going on.

It's probably self correcting over the long term, but meanwhile we lose the sort of links that would (or rather, might) enrich the conversation through overcorrection by posters.

It's the obverse side of the slippery slope, I guess.

As for the calculator screenshot, that kind of stuff feels like a consequence of having 'show your working' drilled into your head at school. Which is great to show your teacher that you understood the question and didn't plug it into a calculator, but unnecessary later on.

Send it to your university professor and see how it goes.

You can’t really blame academia for this one.

academia != education

The education system incentives students to be teachable to conserve teacher resources.

Transparent calculations are more important to help folks with low numerical skills.

I think this is actually a really hard challenge to communicate simple calculations easily to a wide audience.

>[0]: "10% of $150M is $15M". Correct, but do we need a screenshot of a calculator for that, let alone Google? (why do people rely on an internet connection and Google for this?)

She knows her audience.

> why do people rely on an internet connection and Google for this?

It's faster than opening a dedicated calculator program. If you're in a browser already, just ctrl-t and type your equation.

CMD-Space is just as quick and works system-wide. There is a Windows equivalent as well. Works when the net is down too.

I had the same experience when marketeers talk about statistics, all of the most basic errors are made (e.g. when A/B testing or channel attribution).

Edward Tufte seems to be here on earth to suffer for some offense in a previous lifetime. To know how badly statistics get abused, to be able to describe it, and be heard by a fraction of people who can't manage to fix the problem either.

No wonder he fucked off to a farm to concentrate on sculptures.

I use google for maths because it's the fastest thing I can get to and TYPE my maths in without having to open a new application. You can even just type it in the search bar of Chrome/Edge and see the result immediately

Both Windows and macOS support calculations in their respective system-wide search bars (Win key on Windows vs Cmd-Space for Spotlight on macOS). They both support pretty cool stuff like sqrt(9), 13^37, but Spotlight edges it slightly by also support bit shifting like 1 << 10 == 1024.

Is this a Cortana feature? Nothing pops up for me (WIN key), and a search online reveals it seems liked to Cortana, which I seemed to have disabled.

Start typing "calculator" after pressing WIN.

Win+R - Type in "calc" hit enter. Works every time, not only when Windows search decides to work.

Nice tip, I just realized spotlight has currency and unit conversions that I typically get from google.

I did not know this - thanks!

It‘s ok to use google for calculations. But kind of strange to show a calculator screenshot as proof for a 10% calculation...

Thanks it was causing me headaches when I was reading the thread. I thought it was some marketing terms and calculation I had no idea about.

What how much did they actually saved? Apology in advance because I really couldn't grasp what she was saying.

I want to give her the credit of making some sort of dramatic point, but yeah it felt a little condescending.

why are you so focused on people using the google calculator? They built it, people will come.

who cares!?

>(why do people rely on an internet connection and Google for this?)

Because most computers lack a copy of bc in /bin.

You think if every computer had bc in /bin, or the equivalent, most people wouldn't still be using Google for math?

It's not the lack of tooling, it's the lack of knowing how to quickly get to the tooling. For most people, especially non-technical, Win+"calc"+enter is not intuitive. Ctrl+T+$formula+enter is. That's the difference.

Win+calc+enter searches being for a calculator on my workstation, Win+cal+enter opens a calendar, and Win+calc+enter works fine for me! Yay!

Some one had mentioned it in the thread. Looks like it's deleted now.

You are right, but also you asked for it by being pedantic: "common" should be "come on" :)

Or "c'mon," if you want to abbreviate it.

Oh yes, fixed it.