Skip to content
Tools for A/B testing with machine learning: No analysis, programming or stopping decisions required? episode artwork

EPISODE · Jun 20, 2024 · 12 MIN

Tools for A/B testing with machine learning: No analysis, programming or stopping decisions required?

from Joseph Jay Williams's podcast · host Joseph Jay Williams

Title: Tools for A/B testing with machine learning: No analysis, programming or stopping decisions required? This brief episode is a teaser for a scientific paper on a tool for experimentation. It was used at Harvard for people to deploy experiments on copy content (text, links, questions). This was done without the designers having to do any programming, any analysis, or even decision making about when to stop the experiment. That was done with a statistical machine learning algorithm, the Bayesian Bandit algorithm Thompson sampling, which changed the probability of assigning users to variants in real-time, as data was being collected. For example, the randomization probability of assigning variants A1 vs A2, would start at 50/50, change to 60/40, 30/70, 45/55, 80/20, 90/10 and so on. The goal was to phase in the variant in proportion to the probability that it would give the highest score in the target metric. The paper is at www.josephjaywilliams.com/pape..., search for 'tools for randomized experiments'. Feel free to share questions, skepticisms, opportunities for applying these kinds of techniques or tools! There are >10 more papers Joseph has on this approach, and 100s in the literature, and excited to engage in discussion! This is an experiment in the next stage of CRO cafe. A professor in experimentation & optimization is interviewing themself, by asking himself questions from listeners and other sources. The professor is www.josephjaywilliams.com and has published over 80 papers since he ran his first experiment in 2004. Like many of you, he's excited to keep innovating in tools and methods for experimentation, personalization, AI, ML until he says goodbye to this lively, lovely world!

Episode metadata supplied by the publisher feed · Published Jun 20, 2024

Embed this episode

Ready to play

Tools for A/B testing with machine learning: No analysis, programming or stopping decisions required?

0:00 12:00

No transcript for this episode yet

We transcribe on demand. Request one and we'll notify you when it's ready — usually under 10 minutes.

No similar episodes found.

No similar podcasts found.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long is this episode of Joseph Jay Williams's podcast?

This episode is 12 minutes long.

When was this Joseph Jay Williams's podcast episode published?

This episode was published on June 20, 2024.

Can I download this Joseph Jay Williams's podcast episode?

Yes. Use the download control on the episode player to save the publisher-provided media file.
URL copied to clipboard!