First Times of 2022

In what is becoming an annual tradition, here's my list of 'things I did for the first time this year', which shows no sign of getting any shorter, even though I'm getting older.

1. I taught someone how to tie a necktie.  It wasn't complicated, and my student was a very capable learner who simply hadn't needed to learn how to tie a tie before.  Took us about three minutes.

2.  I taught someone how to tie their shoelaces (because Velcro has been around for a while now, but hasn't taken over completely).  It took us five minutes: four minutes for me to analyse and work out how I've done it on autopilot for the last 40 years, and then one minute to demonstrate it step by step. 

3. I dressed up as Darth Vader.  Quite a few times, in fact, starting off with comic conventions initially, then a few charity events, but later in the year I also then attended a birthday party as an invited guest.  I mean, they weren't inviting me, they were inviting Darth Vader as part of my local Star Wars group and it would have been rude not to accept.  We attended a birthday party for a young man with cystic fibrosis, and for his friends, some of whom had other disabilities. 

And to complete the year, I attended a Christmas Carol service as Darth Vader, playing the role of King Herod, sharing the stage with a ballet dancer who played the role of the Angel Gabriel.  Not something I'd anticipated at the start of the year!

4. I spoke at my church on a Sunday morning.  I was invited to speak for 10 minutes on one of the Fruits of the Spirit, and chose patience (because people think I'm patient when I'm actually just very good at not speaking out). I've spoken at Sunday evening youth group meetings, but that was 20+ years ago, and this audience was a little more mature. I enjoyed it (I wrote and practised for weeks) and might get to do it again next year.

Here's the link to the video recording: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PVMEMq8546c&t=1767s#bottom-sheet 

5.  I became a Trustee at my church.  This means I have responsibilities (legal responsibilities) for the finances and legal behaviour of the church.  I'm not the only Trustee - we have four in total, plus the senior minister- and the others have all been in the role for several years. I'm hoping to get up to speed pretty quickly.

6. I found, and completed, a South Korean "K-Drama" series which I selected.  As I mentioned last year, my wife introduced me to K-dramas in early 2021, and we watched "Crash Landing On You" which is one of the best drama series I've ever watched - her suggestion.  We also watched "My Love From The Star" which was good (after CLOY, the others tend to pale by comparison).  

This year, I found "Extraordinary Attorney Woo", which is set in a South Korean law firm. Attorney Woo has autistic spectrum disorder, and is a spectacular law student who's just graduated and started work practising law.  It's dubbed, but you soon forget that as the production and sound is exceptionally good.  I recommend it, it's heart-warming and life-affirming.

Crash Landing On You

https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81159258?s=a&trkid=13747225&t=cp&vlang=en&clip=81406209

My Love from the Star 

https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/80025266?s=a&trkid=13747225&t=cp&vlang=en&clip=81152139

Extraordinary Attorney Woo

https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81518991?s=a&trkid=13747225&t=cp&vlang=en&clip=81611334

7. I taught myself to solder.  Yes, I'm a late developer, but I taught myself out of necessity. I needed to fix my Darth Vader voice box, and didn't want to wait until I could get somebody else to do it.  I have since soldered a couple of other small electronics items, and only burned myself slightly once, on my thumb.

8. I taught Ben to play a piece of music on the piano. In early September, he came home from school with music homework: perform a piece of music to a backing track.  Ben won't mind me telling you that he has zero interest in music and hence no experience or musical knowledge.  However, by clever planning and careful choices, he learned to play firstly Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and then the main theme from Star Wars on the piano, single-finger melody, in a weekend (and then practised it for the next two weeks ready for his music lesson).  

A piano will always play the same note when you hit the same key (unlike a violin, which requires skill just to extract a sound from it), irrespective of which finger you use or how close you get to the middle of the key.  This makes it ideal for a beginner who is going to play through a brute-force memorisation exercise. It was a triumph of perseverance and determination for both of us, but for Ben especially. Music is already one of his least favourite subjects at school (what other subject expects you to take the end-of-year test before teaching you the course material?).

I'm pleased and surprised at how I'm still learning, teaching and doing new things. I wish you a happy 2023 and many more new opportunities!

The BBC Micro and sums of 2^n

Our first home computer was an Acorn Electron. Not as widely known as the Commodore 64 or the Sinclair Spectrum, the Electron is most easily described as a cut-down version of the BBC Micro (which was extremely common in schools).  The Electron ran BBC BASIC, which made it relatively user-friendly. There was a full BASIC manual in the box, along with a book containing some relatively simple games and programs, and using the two together it was relatively easy to enter and the customise the games.

In particular, it was possible to modify the games' graphics, and the character sprites.  Each component of the game (a gameplay character) was made either from a combination of simple ASCII characters >->  o<-< or from user-defined graphics.  And the way that you defined the sprites used some simple maths based on a grid and the powers of 2 (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, etc.).  The grid is 8x8 pixels, and each column has a value.  The sum of each row gives its overall value.

Here's an example:

In order to program one of the game sprites, you take each row one at a time. You identify which of the columns have been filled for that row, and then sum their values (based on the column heading).  The first row in the example above has the two central squares shaded, and these have the values 16 and 8; the sum is 24.  The next row has four squares shaded, and these are 32, 16, 8 and 4.  The next has the central six squares, where 64+32+16+8+4 = 126, and the fourth row has all eight squares, the sum is 255.

The heart shape has some new and some familiar combinations, but the same principle applies.

And this walking stick-man has an asymmetrical arrangement, but this is no problem as the same principles apply.

Admittedly I was 8-10 years old when I was programming these sprites, but it never occurred to me that each combination was represented ny a unique sum, and conversely, each total could only be shown by one combination of pixels.

Why? In base 10, each number can only be expressed as a unique sum of 10^0s, 10^1s, 10^2s... and so on.  We call these units, tens and hundreds, and each can hold a value between 0 and 9. So, 9 x 10^0 is 9, and if we want to show an additional unit, we have to add this as an increment to the next column, and have 1x10^1 + 0 x 10^0.  Each number can (and must) be represented by a unique combination of digits in the hundreds, tens and units columns.

The same applies in binary, base 2, which is the underlying basis of the pixel grid. Each pixel can be either 1 or 0, with 1 representing a pixel, and 0 representing a gap.  And every number can be represented by a unique combination of 1s and 0s - binary is just the same as decimal counting, its just the digits that are different!  This time, the values of each column aren't 10^0, 10^1, 10^2 and so on, but 2^0, 2^1, 2^2, 2^3, 2^4 and so on. 

Naturally, the Acorn Electron was also fluent in hexadecimal, but that's a whole other story.

How many of your tests win?

 As November heads towards December, and the end of the calendar year approaches, we start the season of Annual Reviews.  It's time to identify, classify and quantify our successes and failures opportunities from 2022, and to look forward to 2023.  For a testing program, this usually involves the number of tests we've run, and how many recipes were involved; how much money we made and how many of our tests were winners.

If I ask you, I don't imagine you'd tell me, but consider for a moment:  how many of your tests typically win?  How many won this year?  Was it 50%?  Was it 75%?  Was it 90%?  And how does this reflect on your team's performance?

50% or less

It's probably best to frame this as 'avoiding revenue loss'.  Your company tested a new idea, and you prevented them from implementing it, thereby saving your company from losing a (potentially quantifiable) sum of money.  You were, I guess, trying some new ideas, and hopefully pushed the envelope - in the wrong direction, but it was probably worth a try.

Around 75%

If 75% of your tests are winning, then you're in a good position and probably able to start picking and choosing the tests that are implemented by your company.  You'll have happy stakeholders who can see the clear incremental revenue that you're providing, and who can see that they're having good ideas.

90% or more

If you're in this apparently enviable position, you are quite probably running tests that you shouldn't be.  You're probably providing an insurance policy for some very solid changes to your website; you're running tests that have such strong analytical support, clear user research or customer feedback behind them that they're just straightforward changes that should be made.  Either that, or your stakeholders are very lucky, or have very good intuition about the website.  No, seriously ;-)

Your win rate will be determined by the level of risk or innovation that your company are prepared to put into their tests.  Are you testing small changes, well-backed by clear analytics?  Should you be?  Or are you testing off-the-wall, game-changing, future-state, cutting edge designs that could revolutionise the online experience? 

I've said before that your test recipes should be significantly different from the current state - different enough to be easy to distinguish from control, and to give you a meaningful delta.  That's not to say that small changes are 'bad', but if you get a winner, it will probably take longer to see it.

Another thought:  the win rate is determined by the quality of the test ideas, and how adventurous the ideas are, and therefore the win rate is a measure of the teams who are driving the test ideas.  If your testing team is focused on test ideas and has strengths in web analytics and customer experience metrics, then your team will probably have a high win rate.  Conversely, if your team is responsible for the execution of test ideas which are produced by other teams, then a measure of test quality will be on execution, test timing, and quantity of the tests you run.  You can't attribute the test win rate (high or low) to a team who develop tests; in fact, the quality of the code is a much better KPI.

What is the optimal test win rate?  I'm not sure that there is one, but it will certainly reflect the character of your test program more than its performance. 

Is there a better metric to look at?   I would suggest "learning rate":  how many of your tests taught you something? How many of them had a strong, clearly-stated hypothesis that was able to drive your analysis of your test (winner or loser) and lead you to learn something about your website, your visitors, or both?  Did you learn something that you couldn't have identified through web analytics and path analysis?  Or did you just say, "It won", or "It lost" and leave it there?  Was the test recipe so complicated, or contain so many changes, that isolating variables and learning something was almost completely impossible?

Whatever you choose, make sure (as we do with our test analysis) that the metric matches the purpose, because 'what gets measured gets done'.

What is the highest product of numbers that sum to 10?

 I'm always on the lookout for maths puzzles, especially ones which can be described simply but require some work to find the solution.  The most popular article on my blog is the one "Can you use the digits 1,2,3 and 4 to make the numbers from 1 to 50."  It's depressingly popular, when I have spent so much more time on many of the other posts here.  Ah, well, that's life.

A puzzle I found recently goes like this: "What is the highest product (i.e. multiply them all together) of numbers that sum to 10?"

Simple enough. 

I started with the pairs, 1+9, 2+8 and so on:

1 * 9 = 9
2 * 8 = 16
3 * 7 = 21
4 * 6 = 24
5 * 5 = 25

Well, there we are.  The answer so far is 25.  The highest value we can reach for x (10 - x) is when x = 5 and 5 * 5 = 25.  We can even prove this, using differention:

If y = x(10-x) = 10x - x^2  

then dy/dx = 10 - 2x 

And the maximum value is when dy/dx = 0 and if 10 - 2x = 0 then x = 5.  QED

However, there are multiple other ways of making 10 by summing numbers together; nobody said it had to be just two numbers.

For example, 4 + 4 + 2 = 10, and 4 * 4 * 2 = 32, which is higher than the 25 we achieved previously.

A few more examples:

2 * 4 * 2 * 2 = 32
2 * 3 * 5 = 30
3 * 3 * 4 = 36

The highest that can be achieved, it seems, is 36.

Let's try another number - let's try summing to 15, and see if we can find a pattern.

3 * 6 * 6 = 108
5 * 5 * 5 = 125
3 * 3 * 3 * 4 * 2 = 162
3 * 4 * 4 * 4 * 4 = 192
3 * 3 * 3 * 3 * 3 = 243

Summing to 15, the highest product we can achieve is 243.

Summing to 19 (if you fancy a challenge) is 972, where 3 * 3 * 3 * 3 * 3 * 4 = 972.

Proof (or general principle)

When forming the product with the highest value, the highest value can be achieved by using 2s and 3s.

Every larger number can be broken down to 2s and 3s which will multiply together to form a larger product.

For example, 9 can be be broken down to 5 and 4, which will multiply to form 20 (which is higher than 9).

9 --> 5 * 4 = 20

5 -->  3 * 2 = 6

9 --> 3 * 2 * 4 = 24

4 --> 2 * 2 = 4 (hence it does not matter if we choose a 4 or two 2s).

7 --> 3 * 4 = 12

6 --> 3 * 3 = 9

Any number n can be broken down to 2s and 3s which will multiply together to form a product which is greater than n.  Hence, the largest product we can obtain for 10 is 3 * 3 * 3 * 2 = 18, and the general principle is to break down the sum number into 3s (and 2s if the number is not a product of 3) to obtain the highest product.

A Quick Checklist for Good Data Visualisation

One thing I've observed during the recent pandemic is that people are now much more interested in data visualisation.  Line graphs (or equivalent bar charts) have become commonplace and are being scrutinised by people who haven't looked at them since they were at school.  We're seeing heatmaps more frequently, and tables of data are being shared more often than usual.  This was prevalent during the pandemic, and people have generally retained their interest in data presentation (although they wouldn't call it that).

This made me consider:  as data analysts and website optimisers, are we doing our best to convey our data as accurately and clearly as possible.  We want to share information in a way that is easy to understand and easy to base decisions on, and there are some simple ways to do this (even with 'simple' data), even without glamorous new visualisation techniques.

Here's the shortlist:

- Tables of data should be presented consistently either vertically or horizontally, don't mix them up
- Graphs should be either vertical bars or horizontal bars; be consistent
- If you're transferring from vertical to horizontal, then make sure that top-to-bottom matches left-to-right
- If you use colour, use it consistently and intuitively.

For example, let's consider the basic table of data:  here's one from a sporting context:  the English Premiership's Teams in Form:  results from a series of six games.

Pos	Team	P	Pts	F	A	GD	Sequence
1	Liverpool	6	16	13	2	11	W W W W W D
2	Tottenham	6	15	10	4	6	W L W W W W
3	West Ham	6	14	17	7	10	D W W W W D

The actual data itself isn't important (unless you're a Liverpool fan), but the layout is what I'm looking at here.  Let's look at the raw data layout:

Pos	Category	Metric 1	Metric 2	Metric 3	Metric 4	Derived metric	Sequence
1	Liverpool	6	16	13	2	11	W W W W W D
2	Tottenham	6	15	10	4	6	W L W W W W
3	West Ham	6	14	17	7	10	D W W W W D

The derived metric "GD" is Goal Difference, the total For minus the total Against (e.g. 13-2=11).

Here, the categories are in a column, sorted by rank, and different metrics are arranged in subsequent columns - it's standard for a league table to be shown like this, and we grasp it intuitively.  Here's an example from the US, for comparison:

Player	Pass Yds	Yds/Att	Att	Cmp	Cmp %	TD	INT	Rate	1st	1st%	20+
Deshaun Watson	4823	8.9	544	382	0.702	33	7	112.4	221	0.406	69
Patrick Mahomes	4740	8.1	588	390	0.663	38	6	108.2	238	0.405	67
Tom Brady	4633	7.6	610	401	0.657	40	12	102.2	233	0.382	63

You have to understand American Football to grasp all the nuances of the data, but the principle is the same.   For example, Yds/Att is yards per attempt, which is Pass Yds divided by Att.  Columns of metrics, ranked vertically - in this case, by player.

Here's another example; this is taken from Next Green Car comparison tools:

The first thing you notice is that the categories are arranged in the top row, and the metrics are listed in the first column, because here we're comparing data instead of ranking them.  The actual website is worth a look; it compares dozens of car performance metrics in a page that scrolls on and on.  It's vertical.

When comparing data, it helps to arrange the categories like this, with the metrics in a vertical list - for a start, we're able to 'scroll' in our minds better vertically than horizontally (most books are in a portrait layout, rather than landscape).

The challenge (or the cognitive challenges) come when we ask our readers to compare data in long rows, instead of columns... and it gets more challenging if we start mixing the two layouts within the same document/presentation.  In fact, challenging isn't the word. The word is confusing.

The same applies for bar charts - we generally learn to draw and interpret vertical bars in graphs, and then to do the same for horizontal bars.

Either is fine. A mixture is confusing, especially if the sequence of categories is reversed as well. We read left-to-right and top-to-bottom, and a mixture here is going to be misunderstood almost immediately, and irreversibly.

For example, this table of data (from above)

Pos	Category	Metric 1	Metric 2	Metric 3	Metric 4	Derived metric	Sequence
1	Liverpool	6	16	13	2	11	W W W W W D
2	Tottenham	6	15	10	4	6	W L W W W W
3	West Ham	6	14	17	7	10	D W W W W D

Should not be graphed like this, where the horizontal data has been converted to a vertical layout:

And it should certainly not be graphed like this:  yes, the data is arranged in rows and that's remained consistent, but the sequence has been reversed!  For some strange reason, this is the default layout in Excel, and it's difficult to fix.

The best way to present the tabular data in a graphical form - i.e. putting the graph into a table - is to match the layout and the sequence.

And keep this consistent across all the data points on all the slides in your presentation.  You don't want your audience performing mental gymnastics to make sense of your data.  It would be like reading a book, then having to turn the page by 90 degrees after a few pages, then going back again on the next page, then turning it the other way after a few more pages.  

You want your audience to spend their mental power analysing and considering how to take action on your insights, and not to spend it trying to read your data.

Testing Towards The Future State

Once or twice in the past, I've talked about how your testing program needs to align with various departments in your company.  For example, you need to test a design that's approved by your site design and branding teams (bright orange CTA buttons might be a big winner for you, but if your brand colour is blue, you're not going to get very far).  

Or what happens if you test a design that wins but isn't approved by the IT team - they just aren't heading towards Flash animations and video clips, and they're going to start using 360-degree interactive images?  The answer - you compiled and coded a very complicated dead-end.

But what about the future state of your business model?  Are you trying to work out the best way to promote your best-selling product?  Are you testing whether showing discounts as £s off or % off?  This kind of testing assumes that pricing is important, but take a look at https://www.rolls-roycemotorcars.com/en_GB/showroom/cullinan.html which doesn't have any price information on it at all.  Scary, isn't it?  But apparently that's what a luxury brand looks like (and for a second example, try https://www.luxuryrestaurantguide.com/ ).

  Apart from sharing the complicated and counter-intuitive navigation of the Rolls Royce site, it also shares a distinct lack of price information.  Even the sorting and filtering excludes any kind of sorting by price - it's just not there.

So, if you're testing the best way of showing price information on your site while the business as a whole is moving towards a luxury status, then it's time to start rethinking your testing program and moving into line with the business.

Conversely, if you're moving your business model towards the mainstream audience in order to increase volumes, then it's time to start looking at pricing (for example) and making your site simpler, less ethereal and less vague, with content that's focused more on the actual features and benefits of the product, and less on the lifestyle.  Take, for example, the luxury perfume adverts that proliferate in the run-up to Christmas.  You can't convey a smell on television, or online, so instead we get these abstract adverts with people dancing on the moon; bathing in golden liquid or whatever, against a backdrop of classical music.  Does it tell you the price?  Does it tell you what it smells like?  In some cases, does it even tell you what the product is called?  Okay, it usually does, but it's a single word at the end, which they say out loud so you know how to pronounce it when you go shopping on the high street.

Compare those with, for example, toy adverts.  Simple, bright, noisy, clear images of the product, repetition of the brand and product name and with the prices (recommended retail price) running constantly throughout, and at the end.  Yes, there are legal requirements regarding toy adverts, but even so, no-one would ever think of a toy as a premium. Yet somehow, toys sell extremely well year after year, whether cheap or expensive, new or established brand.

So, make sure your testing is in line with business goals - not just KPIs, but the wider business strategy, branding and positioning. Don't go testing price presentation if the prices are being removed from your site; don't test colours of buttons which contravene your marketing guidelines for a classy monochrome site, and so on. Business goals are not always financial, so keep in touch with marketing!

Star Trek Picard Season 2 Episode 10 Farewell

As we enter the final episode of this season of Picard, here are my thoughts (before watching) of what I'd like to see (and not see) in the finale.

1. No magic tricks. The crew are stranded in the 21st century with no ship. Let's see how they get home.  Right planet, wrong time.

2.  No reset button plot.  A common cliche in time travel stories, this involves everything being put back the way it was and nobody knows anything about what happened.

3.  Rios to pay his penance for breaking the temporal prime directive.  Butterflies, indeed? He's trampled a few.

4. Agnes not to reappear and bring the crew back home.  No, she's gone and should not reappear to save the day. 

So no, on reflection, I did not think this was not a great episode.

We join the crew standing around and talking in Chateau Picard, with the sense of urgency which they've had since they arrived in the 21st century.  Soong is still out there, planning to sabotage the Europa mission which launches imminently, but hey, let's stand around and talk.

Tallinn will break her cover to keep Renee Picard safe, while the rest of the team will try to track down Soong and stop his sabotage efforts.  Tallinn dishes out some more magic tricorder boxes, then beams out in a box of blue smoke... and Picard leaps into the box at the last second.  He can see (and this is conveyed well) that Tallinn is planning to sacrifice herself if necessary to save Renee, following the Borg Queen's cryptic "one Renee must live, one Renee must die" line in the last episode.  What's with the cryptic clues from the Borg? Can we go back to Resistance is Futile? We knew what THAT meant.  The Borg Queen has become nothing more than a Battlestar Galactica hybrid, spouting philosophical nonsense. 

The rest of the crew, meanwhile, will pursue Soong, who we last saw at his lair, mourning the loss of his daughter, or his life's work... or both.  Not sure how they got from Paris to LA, but I guess they used their magic tricorder boxes. It almost turns out to be immaterial, as they go off on a wild goose chase.  It's been a tragic tale for them, as they've been working in parallel with the main plot and having very little impact on it throughout. This time, it turns out that Soong has already left his house in order to sabotage the Europa mission personally. He's left four drones (mini helicopters, although four Borg drones would have been more fun) to launch and collide with the Europa craft as it takes off.  The crew gain control of one of them, and Rios prepares to take the rest down. "Prepare for ramming speed," as Worf once famously said.

They succeed, and somehow return to Chateau Picard. Don't ask me how, I've lost track. 

Tallinn and Picard discuss sacrifice, destiny and all the subjects that Q dredged up from Picard's subconscious (I still maintain there was no way Q knew what he was doing).  Picard has changed, surprise, surprise, and if he ever gets home will rethink his relationship with Laris.  The relationship between Picard and Q has always been great source of stories and character development.  Until now.   Q deserved a better conclusion than this: he's dying, doesn't want to die alone, so sends Picard on a trip into his childhood to see his relationship with his parents differently, so that Picard will thank Q for the second chance and then go and live a better life.  Oh, and Q mysteriously regains his powers for one last click of the fingers.

No.  It would have been more interesting for Q to have kept his powers, but they switched on and off, just like the transporters, at the whim of the story.

Anyways: Kore (Soong's daughter) is now out and about and enjoying her freedom, starting with the total erasure of all her father's data files.  No more work on genetic modifications for his 'daughters'.  This leaves Soong with just the paper copies of some of his work, including Project Khan.  Nice touch. Khan was a genetically enhanced superhuman - extra strength, extra intelligence, extra arrogance and extra charisma - who was responsible for starting the Eugenics Wars, also known as World War 3.  See the Original Series episode Space Seed, and Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan.  See also Star Trek Into Darkness, which is a modern twist on the same theme.  See also the Enterprise series episodes The Augments and Cold Station Zero.  They could have unpacked a little more of this, but the episode is already crammed full of stuff (some of it was just crazy).

For example, after Kore deletes all of Soong's work, she heads off into her new life, where she is randomly accosted by none other than Wesley Crusher.  Wesley is a character from The Next Generation, who was last seen joining a creature known as the Navigator and travelling time and space.  Long story, see The Next Generation episodes Where No One Has Gone Before and especially Journey's End.  It transpires that he has set up/will set up the Supervisors (or Watchers), of which Tallinn was one, and so was Gary Seven in the Original Series episode Assignment Earth.  This stretches incredulity, but we can play along... until he adds that his organisation's role is to keep the timeline on track and prevent major disasters.  So, he recruits Kore - right there and then - while her father is just around the corner taking humanity on its first steps to World War 3? And he doesn't think to address that?  As a friend of mine pointed out, Wesley Crusher makes everything he touches worse.

This leaves the main plot: will Soong be able to sabotage the Europa mission? Rios has downed all the drones, so direct intervention is needed, and Soong takes matters into his own hands.  Using his money and influence and his own inimitable brand of rude charm, he engineers a meeting with Renee. 

Except Tallinn has got their first, and when Soong shakes hands with Renee, introducing a fatal nerve agent through his hands, it is in fact Tallinn who is sacrificing herself (using her disguise tech to appear as Renee).  Soong goes off, believing he's succeeded.  Tallinn dies in Picard's arms; after all, one Renee must die and one must live.

The crew regroup, having completed their mission and saved the day. Now all they have to do is get home.  Except of course that Rios The Butterfly Slayer is staying to mess up the timeline.  And Q suddenly, despite dying, has one final click of his fingers to spare, and can return Picard and the crew back to their own timeline.  The whole mission was contrived by Q so that Picard would realise that Q didn't want to die alone.  And sure enough, Picard hugs Q before they go their separate ways.  Perhaps the mission was designed so that Picard would face his past, or have the courage to start a relationship with Laris? I honestly don't know - this final episode was rushed, crammed full of stuff, and did I mention that we aren't home yet?

The crew are transported back to the bridge of the Stargazer, with the Borg Queen in full assimilation mode.  Except that the Borg Queen is now a very old Agnes Jurati (but looking good for it). The Borg have come to join the Federation to help them stop a massive explosion at the middle of the galaxy.  It all goes smoothly, except that one ship has trouble sorting its shields out... surprise! Elnor is resurrected and alive and well on the Excelsior.  A new era dawns between the Borg and the Federation and all is well with the world. 

The gang all reconvene with Guinan (back to her Whoopi Goldberg guise) who fills Picard in on all the historical gaps:  Rios The Butterfly Slayer set up a clinic with Teresa and helped those in need - there's a photograph of them together behind Guinan's bar.  Teresa's son, Ricardo, went on to become a biology expert.  Renee went to Jupiter's moons and brought back a biological sample of a microbe, which Ricardo identified as a cure for Earth's ecological ills.  So that's what it was all about.  At least that got tidied up - not sure why not having the ecological fix would cause humanity to become xenophobic overlords, but it's possible.

Even Picard gets to go home to find that Laris is packing her bags, but persuades her to stay.  We don't get to see them kiss - surely the biggest emotional payoff since that near-miss in the first episode - but we can be sure that all is well in Chateau Picard.

If this review seems long, it's because there was far too much going on, all of it rushed and most of it thrown together, and I didn't get to cover it all.  It ended the series in the same way as a parent does with an evening story when it's well past bedtime - everything is finished, but the last page is read at double-speed with half the sentences removed.  It was OK, but much of this could have been covered last episode instead.  Good, but not great, with too many cliches and too many Get Out Of Jail Free cards.

Website Compromization

Test data, just like any other data, is open to interpretation.  The more KPIs you have, the more the analysis can be pointed towards one winning test recipe or another.  I've discussed this before, and used my long-suffering imaginary car salespeople to show examples of this.

Instead of a clear-cut winner, which is the best on all cases, we often find that we have to select the recipe which is the best for most of the KPIs, or the best for the main KPI, and appreciate that maybe it's not the best design overall.  Maybe the test recipe could be improved if additional design changes were made - but there isn't time to test these extra changes before the marketing team need to get their new campaign live (or the IT team need to deploy the winner in their next launch).  

Do we have enough time to actually identify the optimum design for the site?  Or the page?  Or the element we're testing?  

Anyways - is this science, or is it marketing?  Do we need to make everything on the site perfectly optimized?  Is 'better than control' good enough, or are we aiming for 'even better'?

What do we have?  Is this site optimization, a compromise, or compromization?

Or maybe you have a test result that shows that your users liked a new feature - they clicked on it, they purchased your product.  Does this sound like a success story?  It does, but only until you realise that the new feature you promoted has diverted users' attention away from your most profitable path.  

For example - your new banner promotes new sports laces for your new range of running shoes... so users purchase them but spend less on the actual running shoes.  And the less expensive shoes have a lower margin, so you actually make less profit. Are you trying to sell new laces, or running shoes?

Or you have a new feature that improves the way you sort your search results, with "Featured" or "Recommend" or "Most Relevant" now serving up results that are genuinely what customers want to see.  The problem is, they're the best quality but lowest-priced products in your inventory, so your conversion rate is up by 10% but your average order value is down by 15%.  What do you do?

Are you following customer experience optimization, or compromization?

Sometimes, you'll need to compromise. You may need to sell the new range of shiny accessories with a potential loss of overall profit in order to break into a new market.  You may decide that a new feature should not be launched because although it clearly improves overall customer experience and sales volumes, it would bring down revenue by 5%.  But testing has shown what the cost of the new feature would be (and perhaps a follow-up test with some adjustments would lead to a drop in revenue of only 2%... would you take that?).    In the end, it's going to be a matter of compromization.

Star Trek Picard Season 2 Episode 9 Hide and Seek

 CONTAINS SPOILERS

Looking back, this series of Picard has had slow patches and fast patches.  The story raced along at the start, slowed down in the tunnels beneath Chateau Picard, raced through a pre-flight gala that was so fast we even started the episode at the end, slowed down while the crew chased the Borg Queen through LA:  to be honest, the variation in pace has left with the plot equivalent of whiplash.

The catch-up ("Previously on Star Trek Picard") at the start of this episode includes Picard and Tallinn discussing Q's intention to get Picard to face his childhood, and Picard's reply, "All of that is irrelevant!"  I only wish it was, because we get a lot more of it in this episode, interrupting the main plot in the most critical moments.  The story races along... it grinds to a halt as we get flashback... it races again... it stops again...  I either need a seatbelt or an airbag.

I could summarise the plot in a few sentences:  the Borg Queen beams her new drones into the field outside Chateau Picard, and then a few more (including herself) into La Sirena.  In a bizarre jump-cut continuity error, Agnes goes from wearing her bright red dress to absolutely nothing in two seconds, before assimilating the Queen's earlier body and going FULL Borg.

Meanwhile, Rios is on board, and he activates the Emergency Combat Hologram in the form of Elnor, the sword-wielding Romulan ninja commando, who holds his own against the Borg (nice touch: Elnor wears a mobile holographic emitter, as the Doctor did in Voyager).  The rest of the crew take on the Borg outside, get chased inside the Chateau (where Picard has his childhood flashbacks), before managing to return to the ship (Seven and Raffi across the ground, Picard and Tallinn through an escape tunnel initially, before the whole thing turns into a dead end and they also return overground, with Rios's assitance).

Agnes and the Borg Queen continue to struggle to take full control; she attacks Raffi and Seven as they return to the Sirena, and as the Borg Queen attempts to deal the fatal blow to Seven, Agnes intervenes. 

They have their own internal dialogue, where Agnes persuades the Queen to stop assimilating the strong, but instead look to connect the weak, vulnerable and injured into a cooperative rather than a collective, which the Queen does - Seven is first.  The Borg Queen/Agnes commandeers the Sirena, and takes off for the Delta Quadrant, to remake the Borg in a new, slightly more charitable form than it was previously.  As she says, "The Federation will have no need for a Borg-slayer - at least not from us."

The Sirena crew realise their mission must be to protect the launch of the Europa mission, as it was all along (the rest, including the extended flashback scenes, are irrelevant) and head off from central France back to the USA (presumably with Tallinn's transporting device).

This could be covered in 20 minutes, maybe 30, but it was stretched - painfully - over 45 minutes as Picard kept having his flashback sequences, and the Borg played hide and seek through the chateau (with the ridiculous plot design that they had to shine their green laser beams wherever they were looking, which immediately gave away their position, direction, and where they were looking).  These Borg were scariest - and they managed it once in the episode - where they leapt into the heroes' path without shining their beams first.

I'm not saying that the flashback scenes weren't poignant, upsetting or lacking emotional impact - they were.  But they were thrown into the episode at such unexpected moments that they lacked the kick of an emotional reveal, because it was hard to keep up with what was happening.  Most of it I'd guessed previously, but it was certainly saddening Jean-Luc's mother's suicide, and to see that Jean-Luc's best efforts to help his mother were what finally made it possible for her to end her life.  But this is all swept away because here come the Borg and their insidious ally, Adam Soong.

And I'm not buying the whole 'Q planned this all so that Picard would have to face his past' nonsense.  Q did not plan for Picard to make his own way back to the 21st century; did not anticipate Picard bring the Borg Queen along, or landing in the grounds of his own castle.  No.  Q may be a lot of things, but he's not capable of predicting the future, or Picard's actions.  Sorry, no, I'm not buying it, especially not in an episode which is so cliche-ridden as to be set during a dark and stormy night.

Instead, it's interesting (worrying?) to note that Picard and the crew have been relegated to passengers or followers of the plot for most of the time since it was put into effect in the first episode.  

1.  The Borg summoned Picard to the spatial anomaly; Picard went running along on the Stargazer, straight into a fleet-destroying battle with the Borg.  

2.  Q whips Picard over to the alternate timeline, Picard has to work out what's happening.

Ok, Picard and crew kidnap the Borg Queen and she agrees to transport them back in time, but since then, they've been doing nothing but chasing along - 

3.  chasing Q and trying to stop him preventing the launch of the Europa (their one success to date); 

4.  chasing Rios when he got hospitalized; arrested and transferred (wild goose chase, almost, since Picard found Renee and Tallinn single-handedly) 

5.  chasing the Borg Queen across LA (total failure);  

6.  attempt to prevent the Borg Queen taking over the Sirena (again, failure)... 

It seems to me that they're on course to fail:  Soong's plan to stop the Europa mission will succeed, and they'll all get trapped in the 21st century.  Their track record in this series has not been good. 

But, and here's the question: if they succeed in getting the Europa to launch, how will they get home?  The Borg Queen has commandeered their spaceship - we see it go to warp off to the Delta Quadrant (again, another nice touch - this is the Borg's home in The Next Generation) - so they are well and truly stuck on Earth, in the past.  I fear I'm going to be very unimpressed by the resolution in the next and final episode, because something's going to have to appear out of thin air; Q has no powers either, and Guinan is only your typical alien.  No, I can't help feel slightly uneasy regarding next week's episode, especially since we're catapulted into it with the Borg Queen's annoyingly cryptic message: "The mission must succeed.  There must be two Renees - one who lives, one who dies."  Ok, parallel universes it is then, folks.  I just wish the Borg had tried to assimilate Q, but that's just me, right?

Star Trek Picard Season 2 Episode 8 Mercy

CONTAINS SPOILERS

I can't quite believe I missed the single biggest plot development from last week's episode - namely that at the end of the episode, Picard and Guinan were arrested by the FBI after Picard's beam-in to Forward Street was picked up by a CCTV camera.  Well, it's time to correct that oversight, because this episode features the subsequent interrogation by an FBI agent who really doesn't seem to know what he's doing.

The pre-credits sequence at the start shows a young boy (I guessed Picard again, still running from some monsters or other) running through a forest night, chased by apparently imaginary but actually real monsters.  Neither the boy nor the pursuers are fully revealed at this point, but fortunately we don't have to wait too long to find out.

FBI Agent Martin Wells seems out of his depth and incoherent in his line of questioning; there are veiled threats, circumstantial evidence and bits and pieces (some photos from the gala; the video of Picard's transporter beam) and this would be trivial except that the Europa flight is now in jeopardy again, and Picard and Guinan are imprisoned in an unknown cellar somewhere in an FBI facility in LA.  I never watched The X Files and I have no desire too now, and this aspect of the episode frustrated me.  Still, it does get moving fairly quickly - there are no drawn-out conspiracy theories, just story development.  Agent Wells reveals that somebody transcribed Rios's outburst while he was in the immigration detention centre, and hearing Picard read out these words while in detention with the FBI makes the story seem very plausible, and neatly draws out that thread from the earlier episode.  

Guinan is taken from the interrogation room so that Wells can continue his interview with Picard one-to-one.  While Guinan is waiting in a separate room, Q enters - having been 'summoned' by Guinan in the previous episode.  Q, now wearing FBI garb, reveals that not only has he lost his powers, but he's actually dying.  This is indeed an opportunity for Picard to learn about Q, but it's not gone as Q intended (because he's still a poor judge of Picard's character).  Q hasn't trapped Picard in the past; Picard did that himself, and Q declares: "The trap is immaterial, it's the escape that counts."  Guinan projects herself back into Picard's interrogation room, with the message, "All humans are stuck in the past," which Picard repeats to Wells, as Wells explains his own back-story.

Agent Wells is the boy we saw in the pre-credits sequence, who had been out looking for his missing dog in a forest after dark.  The story is very reminiscent of Flight of the Navigator and E.T., but it's passable (both films are worth watching, if for some reason you've never seen them before).  While searching for his dog, he happens upon two Vulcans who are carrying out a study on Earth (we've seen Vulcans on Earth in First Contact, and in the quiet but very engaging Star Trek Enterprise episode, Carbon Creek. If you've not seen it, do - it's very, very clever).   The Vulcans realised they'd been discovered, and attempted to chase Agent Wells, in order to mind-meld with him and erase his memory.  The Vulcan was beamed out before he could carry out the mind-meld, and hence Agent Wells now has a fascination - obsession? - with extra-terrestrial life.  The conversation between Wells and Picard is well-written once they get past the veiled threats and conspiracy theories, although some might think it was resolved a bit quickly.  Picard demonstrates a Vulcan mind-meld (he's participated in them in his past), and explains: he needs help from Agent Wells, who subsequently agrees to let Picard and Guinan go free. It worked for me, but I do hope that Wells (or one of his descendants) turns up in the 25th century with a key role in history. 

Seven and Raffi have finally put some urgency into their search for the Borg Queen.  Too little, too late, however, as Agnes is now almost completely assimilated by the Borg, due to a diet of endorphins, lithium and other trace metals which Agnes is compulsively eating.  Seven and Raffi even manage to track down Agnes, using Seven's intuition, but it is, dare I say, futile.  Agnes is now almost entirely Borg, and consequently is very strong, incapacitating Seven with a single blow that sends her flying across a car park, and then preparing to strangle Raffi with a single hand (Darth Vader style).  Agnes, however, is able to assume control and release Raffi, but there's no way that the two of them alone would be able to provide sufficient resistance to stop her.

There's a surprising amount of bickering between Raffi and Seven - yes, Raffi is manipulative (and even persuaded Elnor to join Starfleet security, a decision which ultimately led to his death in this parallel universe) and yes, Seven is the epitome of cold and aloof, but their relationship has clearly left them both scarred.

Rios, meanwhile, is embarking one on of the most ridiculous relationships in Star Trek history since Kirk fell in love with Edith Keeler in The City on the Edge of Forever (a time-travel episode that's regarded as one of The Original Series' best).  There's no way his relationship with Teresa is going to work, for a whole host of reasons (the temporal prime directive being one of them), but here they are, eating replicated cake while Rios fixes the Sirena and removes the Borg subroutines from its main computer.  Is there much more to say here?  Not really, except he'd better get fixing those routines quickly.

Dr Adam Soong has been a busy man.  As his latest 'daughter' Kore is discovering, Soong has been attempting to manufacture a genetically pure human clone.  Attempting, and failing.  Kore discovers that she is the last in a depressingly long line of at least a dozen failed "experiments", and that she has outlived many of her predecessors by a significant amount.  I'm not sure if this was meant to be a great reveal, or a plot twist, but it seemed obvious to me that she was genetically manufactured, and was the latest in a line of clones.  I'll acknowledge, though, that I hadn't realised that Persphone (and the alternative name Kore) was the daughter of Zeus (even though I caught the name in the previous episode, I didn't work out its significance).  Soong is as proud as he is delusional.

Kore activates Soong's virtual reality device, and in doing so, triggers a subroutine that Q had implanted in it.  This subroutine is basically a plot device that enables Q to speak directly with Kore, and show her (a) that she is a clone, or at least genetically created instead of conceived, and (b) that Q can send a cure for her genetic disorder.  He sends the cure in a little vial with a label.  I was expecting it to say "Drink me" in Alice in Wonderland style, but instead it was labelled "Freedom".  

How does this all fit together?  The answer is 'exceptionally well'.  Kore confronts Soong about his work, questioning if he loves her at all, and if he does, then is it because she's a living person, or just the fulfilment of his lab work.  Tough question.  He can't answer convincingly, and she steps out into the previously-toxic sunlight.  She's taken Q's cure, which is completely effective, and she walks out of his house, his garden and his life.  This leaves Soong broken, frustrated, weak and very vulnerable.

Raffi and Seven, meanwhile, are using their tricorder-box-of-magic to tap into Agnes's companion's mobile phone  Agnes left the bar with him in the previous evening, attempted to find a connection with him (as Borg are wont to do), failed, killed him and then consumed the lithium from his mobile phone battery, in order to speed up Agnes's assimilation process.  Raffi and Seven connect his now-flat mobile phone to their tricorder in order to deduce Agnes's/Borg Queen's next step.  And deduce it, they do, by reviewing the internet search history on the phone.

The Borg Queen realises that she needs help to speed up the assimilation of Agnes, and to produce her own nanoprobes and begin assimilating the 21st century, and turns to an expert in biology and human genetics:  Dr Soong.  The sight of her arriving at Soong's house was one of those 'eureka' moments - suddenly all the convoluted and seemingly irrelevant plotting made sense.  

"I assume a lecture on the resistance of futility is not going to be necessary."
"Am I dreaming?  Or is this a nightmare?"
"Ultimately, that's up to you."

Nightmare, obviously.

She offers to make him immortal - figuratively - with a long legacy of being the father of the future of the human race.  This is exactly what he's searching for, and knowingly or otherwise, the Queen plays to his insecurities and desires, telling him how he'll be famous, but only if he can stop the Europa mission (otherwise it's alcoholism and obscurity).  In another case of stories coming together, the Borg Queen reveals that the Europa mission will uncover microbial life in one of Jupiter's moons that will render his genetic research obsolete (and presumably remove all funding from his work).  So that's why the Europa mission must succeed.  All the pieces that have been in play are now starting to come together and make sense.  Soong can provide the "raw ingredients" that the Queen requires to complete her nanoprobe assembly process (and further the assimilation of Agnes, presumably), and gain access to the security forces; the Queen can use them to prevent the Europa mission from happening... by storming the Sirena and preventing any further interference from Picard and his team.

The story wastes no time:  Soong and the Queen make their deal, and then we see the Queen start adding the security forces' biological and technological distinctiveness to her own... she's assimilating them into a very dangerous squad of Borg drones.  Rios, meanwhile is oblivious, making cake and trying to fix the transporters.  The condition of the transporters is now reaching joke level:  they only work when it's not urgent... Rios beamed himself and his girlfriend into the Sirena without any problem last time:  this time, when the crew need the transporters - they're offline.  Picard, Seven and Raffi meet up, and will use Tallinn's transporter to return to the Sirena... battle lines are drawn, and the next episode should be a good one!