You need two insights here: 1) Conditional probability is a mathematical technology that does exist. 2) Buying X is not entirely random across the population. The ways X is not random vary based on the good. Consider refrigerators.
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You probably buy one every ten years. If I don't know where you are in your refrigerator cycle, my prior estimate should be 2.7e-4 probability of you buying it tomorrow. Suppose I know you bought yesterday. In my life on earth, I have realized that buyer's remorse is a thing.
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What's a SWAG for how often a purchase immediately goes wrong? Not right color? Fridge DOA? Shoot I mismeasured my kitchen? Wife just hates it? Call that 2%. If I fix it within a week, then 2% / 7 = 2.9e-3 probability of purchasing a new fridge. That's a 10X relative risk.
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Here's a true statement: People who will in 2018 give birth to a child named Abigail are at least 5X more likely to give birth to a child in 2019 than people chosen at random. "Naming your child Abigail can't make you more likely to get pregnant." Again, failure to do the math.
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(You get a 2X there, for free, from the observation "If you had a child named Abigail this year you are biologically capable of having children; this is not true of no less than half of humanity. Now apply same insight to childbearing age and you're already at 5X+.)
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I feel like an additional layer of math could be applied to distinguish between things like reordering antiperspirants and, say, stocking up on extra 50" plasma TVs, though, and Amazon wasn't doing that the last I checked.
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That being said, features are expensive, so I'm not entirely surprised getting those details right when the payoff of fixing it is "people might complain less" isn't a priority.
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Good thread. The marginal cost for Amazon to advertise to you on their platform or via email is pretty close to zero so it’s always worth it for them to try.
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There's the opportunity cost of not showing another ad in that slot, though. So they're showing you what they think is the ad with the highest expected value for them.
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Also letting your customers think they are really smart they just figured out this thing you dident is not overall a bad thing when doing sales sometimes
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