Publications

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2023

Teachers are also forever learning

1 minute read

This week I learnt that I have been confusing people for years about what a hypothesis really is. A conversation with Erin and Craig helped me understand my ...

No velocity without speed

1 minute read

Speed is not velocity, but this does not mean that speed is not important. In fact, speed is a prerequisite for velocity: without speed, there can be no velo...

This meeting could have been a wiki page

1 minute read

There is a popular meme which is used as a response to “useless” meetings: “this meeting could have been an email”. I think replacing meetings with emails wo...

Speed is not velocity

1 minute read

“Won’t running all those experiments slow down our product development?” When speaking at conferences, I get this question a lot. And my answer is always the...

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2022

Organising for scaled experimentation

6 minute read

The Experimentation Hub is central to our strategy, but it alone is not sufficient to scale experimentation across our organisation. We will describe the hyb...

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2021

Building a Culture of Experimentation

5 minute read

I will draw a rough outline of the kind of culture that we are trying to build at Vista, and how we are taking the first steps towards that vision.

Multiplication instead of division

10 minute read

we will examine in some detail why we consider research and experimentation to be the “peanut butter and jelly” of the customer insights world — two unique t...

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2020

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2019

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2018

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2013

Predictive Analytics World London

less than 1 minute read

In October I’ll speak at Predictive Analytics World in London. Once again, I’ll be talking about Data Science.

Data Science: for Fun and for Profit

less than 1 minute read

In the next few weeks I’ll be giving two talks on the topic of Data Science at Xebicon and another event affiliated with Xebia. There is an abstract of my sp...

A New Kind Of Science?

less than 1 minute read

I am no longer a Corporate Ninja. As of a few weeks ago I can now call myself “Data Scientist at Booking.com”.

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2012

Evidence-Based Everything

less than 1 minute read

I’m not really interested in an exposition of your facts. I don’t very much care to learn about your reasons.

Snake Oil and Tiger Repellant

1 minute read

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article explaining how companies are starting to use (big) data to support their recruiting efforts. It provides a...

Bin Packing Too Many Features

less than 1 minute read

My girlfriend has been struggling with an interesting little problem lately. She was asked to determine the optimal distribution of medicine boxes and bottle...

Future Felony

less than 1 minute read

Written by Arthur C. Clarke in 1976, Imperial Earth is set in faraway 2276.

Understanding

2 minute read

Derek Jones posits that “success does not require understanding”.

Pitching The Perfect Product Is Not Enough

3 minute read

Marketing catchphrases like “recommended by experts” (an appeal to authority), “world-renowned bestseller” (candidly claiming consensus) and “limited supply ...

Connecting Four in the Cloud

1 minute read

It almost seems like everyone has their head in the cloud these days. And it’s not all just hot air and water vapor. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), plat...

Decisioni in Tempo Reale

less than 1 minute read

I’ll be chairing a implementation round-table session in Rome next month; involving both customers and partners. Sign up if you want to learn more about impl...

Relevance is Irrelevant

less than 1 minute read

Without fail, a company will employ a recommendation engine for a purpose (nobody does this for fun, really). Often, that purpose is profit (or something alo...

Art-Rock Allegory

less than 1 minute read

Contrary to what it may seem like, I have been busy writing; just not for this particular blog.

Extrapolation

less than 1 minute read

There are two types of people in this world: Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.

Selling Ice to Eskimos

less than 1 minute read

Facebook has recently discovered that beyond the uncanny valley of personalized marketing lies the bottomless pit of invasive identity misappropriation.

Waste Of Search

less than 1 minute read

Analyzing website traffic can lead to unexpected insights. This incoming search term caught my eye.

Conversion Rates

less than 1 minute read

In my mind, I write a blog post almost every day. But when I sit down to write, I am at a loss for words.

Recording Events

2 minute read

[ Crossposting here from the Oracle Real-Time Decisions Blog where I have been invited to contribute. ]

Placebo Punctuation

less than 1 minute read

I know it’s almost never necessary to use a semicolon, but I like semicolons; they make me feel smart.

Why Metrics Matter

1 minute read

Daring Fireball quotes some interesting research findings related to what Barry Schwartz dubbed The Paradox Of Choice.

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2011

Think Big, Start Small

2 minute read

I ran into the boss of the boss of the boss of the boss of my boss at London City Airport. He did not recognize me of course; there are quite a few Oracle co...

Cornamified Intersite

less than 1 minute read

After consulting the Interwebs, I’ve added a little glitter to my website that will only be revealed to those that know the ways of the Konami code.

Predicting Pi

3 minute read

A few weeks ago, I showed a colleague1 my little visual demo of my favorite algorithm for estimating the number Pi. His immediate response was so obvious I a...

Connect Four and Minimax

2 minute read

Computers are incredibly fast calculators. That makes them good at maths, but it does not make them smart. People that program computers have to invent cleve...

Scientific Advertising on Steroids

2 minute read

It seems that my little rant against the apparent lack of scientific rigor and the use of data to analyse performance in the world of advertising is nothing ...

Come on. Learn!

1 minute read

3: Gratuitous use of Flash. It is not Adobe’s fault, it is your fault for using Flash for the most pathetic things mankind has known. Why? Because your...

Intervention

1 minute read

It’s been a while. Too long, to be precise. I did not forget, I’ve simply been postponing writing anything for this blog for days on end. Not that I’ve been ...

Mission Statement

1 minute read

After reading Performance Leadership by Frank Buytendijk it occurred to me that a good mission statement might not only be beneficial for organizations. The ...

Git Busy

less than 1 minute read

I’ve started uploading some of the projects I’ve written about on this blog to Github.

Snakes: Evolution

5 minute read

After one of my previous posts about the snake project Casper had some questions.

Solving Every Sudoku Puzzle Faster

6 minute read

Peter Norvig’s excellent essay Solving Every Sudoku Puzzle is a fascinating read, and I would highly recommend you read it (or at least scan it briefly) befo...

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2010

Snakes on a Two-dimensional Plane

3 minute read

[This post is based around a very old pet project of mine. I thought it worthwhile to describe this golden oldie some more detail and relate it to my current...

Monkeynomics

less than 1 minute read

Just like with the real coccyx, we should expect to see analogues to the legacy artifacts discussed in a previous post in other animals sharing recent evolut...

More Pi

less than 1 minute read

In a previous post I’ve explained how we can estimate the number Pi using Monte Carlo Methods (basically throwing darts at a circle). I personally think this...

a Coccyx in the Brain

2 minute read

You might not realize it, but your brain is running some pretty wonky legacy code. Stuff that worked fine back in the day, but is not very well suited for th...

Blogging with the Stars

less than 1 minute read

I started a blog because I wanted to improve my writing skills; and thought I had something to say. You, as a reader can help me figure out how I am doing by...

The Curse of Getting Things Done

1 minute read

I consider myself to be well organized. Both in my professional and personal life I use Remember the Milk for keeping track of almost everything I do using s...

the Moral of a Good Story

1 minute read

I love reading. I love reading about statistics. I love reading about psychology. But most of all, I love reading quite a few books about statistics and psyc...

a Free Tip

1 minute read

A representative of a large company (which shall remain unnamed) recently called on me for some advice. They had accidentally loaded polluted data into their...

the Trick to 42

1 minute read

Frank Buytendijk, in his book Performance Leadership, writes the following. Most people I asked, and most sources I referred to, define an organization si...

Copying Bits in the Fastlane

4 minute read

I’ve finally gotten ‘round to rooting my ‘old’ G1 phone and installing the Cyanogen firmware. I will not bore you with the technical details of flashing firm...

One Step Closer to the Cloud

less than 1 minute read

Because of the continuing lack of internet connectivity at my new address I’ve decided to move my website from my own server to the free space provided by my...

Benford’s Law Revised

less than 1 minute read

After posting my previous article I started wondering why my transactional data contained a disproportional amount of twos. Something must be distorting the ...

Benford’s Law

1 minute read

In a (not so) recent episode of Radio Lab (one of my favorite podcasts) I was introduced to Benford’s Law. I’d never heard of this phenomenon, which in hinds...

a Database is not a Box

2 minute read

I’ve seen people using and building upon databases in lots of different ways; many of them surprisingly original. However, it seems to me that some people do...

I am a Corporate Ninja

less than 1 minute read

At first, the term Business Intelligence (abbr. BI) had me a bit confused. Contrary to my initial interpretation, BI does not concern the mental acuity of co...

Estimating Pi

3 minute read

[I’ve tweeted about this before, but I feel the need to explain.]

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