Asteroid to hit an Earth near you soon!

By Nigel Morgan | 0 Comments | Posted in in Optimization | Permalink

We had a fabulous story emerge this week about a 13 year old German boy “outfoxing” NASA. Apparently NASA has claimed that the asteroid Apophis has a 1 in 45,000 chance of hitting the earth on April 13 2036. Now this budding young German scientist, Nico Marquardt, claimed that the real probability is closer to 1 in 450 (apparently he added-in the possibility of the asteroid hitting an Earth orbiting object and being redirected towards the Earth). Clever lad that Nico; I am sure his inquisitiveness will make him a fine web analyst or even optimization manager at ZAAZ one day, if, of course, astrophysics turns out to be a bit of a fad. Nico if you’re reading this, get in touch, we can probably slip you some allowance up front!!! Anyhow, luckily for all of us, it turns out NASA was right after all and on that night in April many moons from now, we should all be able to sleep quite safely. Phew!

This amusing story of Nico shows how important it is to get it right when dealing with numbers, and how a small error or incorrect assumption can magnify its way through an analysis to have eye-opening consequences (by the way Nico did not consider the fact that the polar orbits of the near earth satellites would take them away from the area that the asteroid would pass through at the given hour). Still, bloody good effort there Nico, we at ZAAZ applaud you.

While most data I have ever had the pleasure of analyzing hasn’t had the same impact (excuse the pun) as the rather sobering “asteroid hits earth, everyone dead” gravity (there I go again), it has been important in its context of marketing superiority over one’s adversaries.

The ubiquity of data and the ability to statistically prove that one design, call to action, promotion is more relevant to your customers than another brings an exciting, unprecedented era in direct, one-on-one marketing. However it also brings its own set of challenges that any manager must appreciate in order to be successful. Focusing on the right data sets, being accurate in your measurement and building optimization projects with statistical precision are all areas that require a level of expertise. Knowing the importance of data driven decision making is only the first step and having good intentions when launching a data driven program does not mean that success is assured (I think the tool vendors have to take some of the blame for this by pushing the “so easy a cat could do it” sales messaging…this is simply not true). The reality is that website marketing managers often do not have the off-the-shelf expertise to manage a successful analytic or optimization program.

So whenever undertaking any analytic or optimization project, be absolutely sure you understand what numbers you need to look at and how to build a statistical or analytical plan for your project success. If this all sounds daunting and outside of your comfort zone; ask a professional for help. While there are not many of us around, we are relatively easy to find. 

However, if you decide to go ahead with your project and do not have the basic analytics and statistics covered, you may have explain to your boss that the project money has gone and you have nothing to show because you designed the experiment incorrectly, made mistakes setting up the tool, or did not have a clear statistical or analytic plan for the project or program.

Of course that is a worse case scenario but unfortunately we see it with startling frequency. Now, if that happens, proverbially speaking, it will probably feel that Nico was right all along and the Apophis asteroid has hit the Earth, or your part of it, after all.