Productivity

It's not just blog posts.

It's about spending time producing something.

This is something I pondered through much of October, as I was working on a number of different projects (none of them related to blogging, web analytics, maths or puzzles).  I aim to produce one post per month for this blog, but October has been so busy that I've just not had time to put two words together.  In fact, I'm editing this in November, so there you go.

But the truth is I've been playing with my children; I've been practising music (and writing some pieces too) and doing so many things that don't feature here that I've just not had time to make a sensible contribution to this blog.

And I guess that's the point - productivity isn't always measurable (especially if you're only measuring one outcome).  My KPI for this blog is post-one-a-month and see which articles are most popular.  And even then, that's not critical, it's just nice to have.

So go be productive offline.  There's a whole planet out there.

Email Etiquette

I'm going to go completely off-topic in this post, and talk about something that I've started noticing more and more over recent months:  poor email etiquette.  Not poor spelling, or grammar, or style, but just a low standard of communication from people and businesses who send me emails.  Things like missing images, poor titles, wonky meta tags, and pre-header text (the part of an email that you see in your browser after the subject title).  This is all stuff that can be accepted, ignored or overlooked - it's fine.  But sometimes the content of the email - the writing style or lack of it - begins to speak more loudly than the text in it.
Way back in the annals of online history, internet etiquette ("netiquette") was a buzz-word that was bandied around chat rooms, HTML web pages, and the occasional online guide.

According to the BBC, netiquette means, "Respecting other users' views and displaying common courtesy when posting your views to online discussion groups." while Wikipedia defines it as, "is a set of social conventions that facilitate interaction over networks, ranging from Usenet and mailing lists to blogs and forums."  Which is fair enough.  In short, netiquette means "Play nicely!"

Email etiquette is something else - similar, but different.  Email is personal, while online posting is impersonal and has a much wider audience.  Email is, to all intents and purposes, the modern version of writing a letter, and we were all taught how to write a letter, right?  No?  Except that the speed of email means that much of the thought and care that goes into writing a letter (or even word-processing one) has also started to disappear.  Here, then are my suggestions for good email etiquette.

 - Check your typing.  You might be banging out a 30-second email, but it's still worth taking an extra five seconds to check that everything is spelt correctly.  "It is not time to launch the product" and "It is now time to launch the product" will both beat a spell-checker, but only one of them is what you meant to say.  


- Use the active tense instead of the passive.  Saying "I understand," or "I agree" just reads better and conveys more information than "Understood." or "Agreed."  You're not a robot, and you don't have to lose your personality to communicate effectively via email.

- Write in complete sentences.  Just because you're typing as fast as you think doesn't mean that your recipients will read the incomplete sentences you've written and correctly extrapolate them back to your original thoughts.  The speed of email delivery does not require speedier responses.  Take your time.  If you start dropping I, you, me, then, that, if  and other important nouns and pronouns from your sentences, and replacing them with full stops, then you're going to confuse a lot of people.  This ties in with the previous point - just because the passive tense is shorter than the active doesn't mean that it will be easier to understand.  You will also irritate those who are having to increase their effort in order to understand you.

"Take your time..."

- Don't use red text, unless you know what you're doing.  Red text says "This is an error", which is fine if you're highlighting an error, but will otherwise frustrate and irritate your readers.  Full capitals is still regarded as shouting (although have you ever noticed that comic book characters shout in almost all their speech bubbles?), which is okay if you want to shout, but not recommended if you want to improve the readability of your message.

- Shorter sentences are better than long ones.  Obviously, your sentences still need to be complete, but this suggestion applies especially if your readers don't read English as their first language.  Break up your longer sentences into shorter ones.  Keep the language concise.  Split your sentences instead of carrying on with an "and...". You're not writing a novel, you're writing a message, so you can probably lose subordinate clauses, unnecessary adverbs and parenthetical statements.  Keep it concise, keep it precise.  This also applies to reports, analyses and recommendations.  Stick to the point, and state it clearly.

"Keep it concise, keep it precise."

- Cool fingers on a calm keyboard.  If you have to reply to an email which has annoyed, irritated or frustrated you, then go away and think about your reply for a few minutes.  Keep calm instead of flying off the handle and hammering your keyboard.  Pick out the key points that need to be addressed, and handle them in a cool, calm and factual manner.  "Yes, my idea is better than yours, and no, I don't agree with your statements, because..." is going to work better in the long term than lots of red text and block capitals.  

 - Remember that sarcasm and irony will be almost completely lost by the time your message reaches its recipient(s).  If you're aiming to be sarcastic or ironic, then you'd better be very good at it, or dose it with plenty of smileys or emoticons to help get the message across.  Make use of extra punctuation, go for italics and capital letters, and try not to be too subtle.  If in doubt, or if you're communicating with somebody who doesn't know you very well, then avoid sarcasm completely.  Sometimes, this can even apply over the phone, too.  Subtlety can be totally lost over a phone conversation, so work out what you want to say, and say it clearly.  Obviously!

- Please and thank you go a long, long way.  If you want to avoid sounding heavy handed and rude, then use basic manners.  If you're making a request, then say please.  If you're acknowledging somebody's work, then say thank you.  You'll be amazed at how this improves working relationships with everybody around you - a little appreciation goes a long way.  I know this is hardly earth-shattering, nor specific to email, but it's worth repeating.

- When you've finished, stop.  Don't start wandering around the discussion, bringing up new subjects or changing topic.  Start another email instead.

FOR EXAMPLE

A potential worst case?  You could start (and potentially end) an email with "Disagree."

Chess Game vs Steve

For this month's post, I'm going to revisit one of the most bizarre Chess games I've ever played over the board (face-to-face).  This game was played on 11 March 2014, and was against Steve (I didn't catch his surname).  I played my standard 1. d4 d5 2. c4 and faced a reply I've not seen before, namely 2.  ... b5.

What's going on?

Steve said after the game that he expected me to capture the "loose" b-pawn, then he'd play a6, I would capture again; he would then recapture with his bishop and after I move my e-pawn, he'd capture my bishop on f1 and unleash a massive Queenside attack with all his open files, and my king unable to castle to safety.

It's a good job I was having none of it.  I played c4xd5, to keep my pawns in the centre.

 1.d4 d5
2.c4 b5
3.cxd5 Nf6
4.e3 Ba6
5.Nc3 b4
6.Qa4+ Qd7
7.Qxb4 Bxf1

So Steve plays his Ba6 and Bxf1 motif, still looking at trapping my king in the centre.

8.Kxf1 Nxd5
9.Qb7 Nb6
10.Nf3 Nc6
11.d5 Nd8
12.Qa6 Nxd5
13.Ne5 Nb4
14.Qc4 Qf5
15.Qb5+

It's not possible to play Ndc6 or Nbc6 here, although the knights will protect each other.  Nc6, 16. Nxc6 Qxb5 17. Nxb5 Nxc6 18. Nxc7+ winning the rook.

Instead, the game continued...

15 ... c6
16.Nxc6 Qd3+
17.Qxd3 Nxd3
18.Nd4 e6
19.Ke2 Ne5
20.Ncb5  threatening Nc7+ and picking up the rook

20 ... Kd7
21.Rd1 Ke7

Black wastes a move while I continue to develop my pieces.  I was really pleased at this point; a pawn up and with superior development - and I was starting to claim the open files as well.

22.Bd2

22. ...  Ndc6

Black wants to exchange my active knights for his stuck on the back rank, and start mobilising his rooks.
23.Nxc6+ Nxc6
24.Rac1 Ne5
25.Rc7+

I exchange my lead in development for a lead in material, picking up the last of black's queenside pawns, and also giving me two connected passed pawns.

25. ...  Kf6 (tucked in behind the knight, which isn't guaranteed to go well)
26.Rxa7 Rb8
27.a4 Bc5
28.Rc7 Bb6
29.Rc2 g5
30.Bc3

"Pin and win..."

Black doesn't see the threat, and instead continues the kingside expansion

30. ... h5
31.f4 gxf4
32.exf4 Rhg8

A real blunder.  Not only do I win the knight on the spot, but the unfortunate position of the rook on b8 needed to be addressed at this point. 

33.Bxe5+ Ke7
34.Bxb8 Rxg2+
35.Kd3 Resigned.

The quick sequence of picking up the knight on e5 and then the rook on b8 has completely tipped the scales, and an unorthodox start comes to a swift end.  I enjoyed the way I dodged my opponent's opening preparation, played the middlegame, and developed my pieces in accordance with standard practice, and I think I was fortunate to pick up the knight and rook so quickly.  My longer term strategy was to start advancing my unopposed a- and b-pawns, probably with the support of my rooks, while sheltering my king near my queenside pawns.

A few months later, we had a rematch, and my game was a disaster (I don't think I still have the scoresheet!).

Checkout Conversion - A Penalty Shoot-Out

This year's World Cup ended barely a few weeks ago, and already the dust has settled and we've all gone back to our non-football lives.

From an English perspective, there were thankfully few penalty shoot-outs in this year's tournament (I can only remember two, maybe three), and even more thankfully, England won theirs (for the first time in living memory).  Penalty shoot-outs are a test of skill, nerve and determination; there are five opportunities to score, or to lose, and to lose completely.  It's all or nothing, and it really could be nothing.

It occurred to me while I was a neutral observer of one of the shoot-outs, that a typical online checkout process is like a penalty shoot out.

Five opportunities to win or lose.
A test of nerve and skill.
All or nothing.
Practice and experience helps, but isn't always enough.

As website designers (and optimizers), we're always looking to increase the number of conversions - the number of people who successfully complete the penalty shoot out, get five out of five and "win".  Each page in a checkout process requires slightly different skills and abilities; each page requires slightly more nerve as you approach the point of completing the purchase, as our prospective customer hands over increasingly sensitive personal information.

So we need to reassure customers.  Checkout conversion comes down to making things simple and straightforward; and helping users keep their eyes on the goal.

1. Basket (or 'cart') - the goal
2. Sign In - does this go in the checkout process, or at the end?
3. Delivery Details - where are you going to deliver the package?
4. Payment Information - how are you going to pay for it?
5. Confirmation - Winner!

Data in Context (England 6 - Panama 1)

There's no denying it, England have made a remarkable and unprecedented start to their World Cup campaign.  6-1 is their best ever score in a World Cup competition, exceeding their previous record of 3-0 against Paraguay and against Poland (both achieved in the Mexico '86 competition).  A look at a few data points emphasises the scale of the win:

*  The highest ever England win (any competition) is 13-0 against Ireland in February 1882.
*  England now share the record for most goals in the first half of a World Cup game (five, joint record with Germany, who won 7-1 against Brazil in 2014).
* The last time England scored four or more goals in a World Cup game was in the final of 1966.
*  Harry Kane joins Ron Flowers (1962) as the only players to score in England's first two games at a World Cup tournament.

However, England are not usually this prolific - they scored as many goals against Panama on Sunday as they had in their previous seven World Cup matches in total.  This makes the Panama game an outlier; an unusual result; you could even call it a freak result... Let's give the data a little more context:

- Panama are playing in their first World Cup ever, and that they scored their first ever goal in the World Cup against England.
- Panama's qualification relied on a highly dubious (and non-existent) "ghost goal"

- Panama's world ranking is 55th (just behind Jamaica) down from a peak of 38th in 2013. England's world ranking is 12th.
- Panama's total population is around 4 million people.  England's is over 50 million.  London alone has 8 million.  (Tunisia has around 11 million people).

Sometimes we do get freak results.  You probably aren't going to convince an England fan about this today, but as data analysts, we have to acknowledge that sometimes the data is just anomalous (or even erroneous).  At the very least, it's not representative.

When we don't run our A/B tests for long enough, or we don't get a large enough sample of data, or we take a specific segment which is particularly small, we leave ourselves open to the problem of getting anomalous results.  We have to remember that in A/B testing, there are some visitors who will always complete a purchase (or successfully achieve a site goal) on our website, no matter how bad the experience is.  And some people will never, ever buy from us, no matter how slick and seamless our website is.  And there are some people who will have carried out days or weeks of research on our site, before we launched the test, and shortly after we start our test, they decide to purchase a top-of-the-range product with all the add-ons, bolt-ons, upgrades and so on.  And there we have it - a large, high-value order for one of our test recipes which is entirely unrelated to our test, but which sits in Recipe B's tally and gives us an almost-immediate winner.  So, make sure you know how long to run a test for.

The aim of a test is to nudge people from the 'probably won't buy' category into the 'probably will buy' category, and into the 'yes, I will buy' category.  Testing is about finding the borderline cases and working out what's stopping them from buying, and then fixing that blocker.  It's not about scoring the most wins, it about getting accurate data and putting that data into context.

Rest assured that if Panama had put half a dozen goals past England, it would widely and immediately be regarded as a freak result (that's called bias, and that's a whole other problem).

When Should You Switch A Test Off? (Tunisia 1 - England 2)

Another day yields another interesting and data-rich football game from the World Cup.  In this post, I'd like to look at answering the question, "When should I switch a test off?" and use the Tunisia vs England match as the basis for the discussion.

Now, I'll admit I didn't see the whole match (but I caught a lot of it on the radio and by following online updates), but even without watching it, it's possible to get a picture of the game from looking at the data, which is very intriguing.  Let's kick off with the usual stats:

The result after 90 minutes was 1-1, but it's clear from the data that this would be a very one-sided draw, with England having most of the possession, shots and corners.  It also appears that England squandered their chances - the Tunisian goalkeeper made no saves, but England could only get 44% of their 18 shots on target (which kind of begs the question - what about the others - and the answer is that they were blocked by defenders).  There were three minutes of stoppage time, and that's when England got their second goal.

[This example also shows the unsuitability of the horizontal bar graph as a way of representing sports data - you can't compare shot accuracy (44% vs 20% doesn't add up to 100%) and when one team has zero (bookings or saves) the bar disappears completely.  I'll fix that next time.]

So, if the game had been stopped at 90 minutes as a 1-1 draw, it's fair to say that the data indicates that England were the better team on the night and unlucky to win.  They had more possession and did more with it. 

Comparison to A/B testing

If this were a test result and your overall KPI was flat (i.e. no winner, as in the football game), then you could look at a range of supporting metrics and determine if one of the test recipes was actually better, or if it was flat.  If you were able to do this while the test was still running, you could also take a decision on whether or not to continue with the test.

For example, if you're testing a landing page, and you determine that overall order conversion and revenue metrics are flat - no improvement for the test recipe - then you could start to look at other metrics to determine if the test recipe really has identical performance to the control recipe.  These could include bounce rate; exit rate; click-through rate; add-to-cart performance and so on.  These kind of metrics give us an indication of what would happen if we kept the test running, by answering the question: "Given time, are there any data points that would eventually trickle through to actual improvements in financial metrics?"

Let's look again at the soccer match for some comparable and relevant data points:

*  Tunisia are win-less in their last 12 World Cup matches (D4 L8).  Historic data indicates that they were unlikely to win this match.

*  England had six shots on target in the first half, their most in the opening 45 minutes of a World Cup match since the 1966 semi-final against Portugal.  In this "test", England were trending positively in micro-metrics (shots on target) from the start.

*  Tunisia scored with their only shot on target in this match, their 35th-minute penalty.  Tunisia were not going to score any more goals in this game.

*  England's Kieran Trippier created six goalscoring opportunities tonight, more than any other player has managed so far in the 2018 World Cup.  "Creating goalscoring opportunities" is typically called "assists" and isn't usually measured in soccer, but it shows a very positive result for England again.

As an interesting comparison - would the Germany versus Mexico game have been different if the referee had allowed extra time?  Recall that Mexico won 1-0 in a very surprising result, and the data shows a much less one-sided game.  Mexico won 1-0 and, while they were dwarfed by Germany, they put up a much better set of stats than Tunisia (compare Mexico with 13 shots vs Tunisia with just one - which was their penalty).  So Mexico's result, while surprising, does show that they did play an attacking game and should have achieved at least a draw, while Tunisia were overwhelmed by England (who, like Germany should have done even better with their number of shots).

It's true that Germany were dominating the game, but weren't able to get a decent proportion of shots on target (just 33%, compared to 40% for England) and weren't able to fully shut out Mexico and score.  Additionally, the Mexico goalkeeper was having a good game and according to the data was almost unbeatable - this wasn't going to change with a few extra minutes.

Upcoming games which could be very data-rich:  Russia vs Egypt; Portugal vs Morocco.

Other articles I've written looking at data and football

Checkout Conversion:  A Penalty Shootout
When should you switch off an A/B test?
The Importance of Being Earnest with your KPIs
Should Chelsea sack Jose Mourinho? (It was a relevant question at the time, and I looked at what the data said)
How Exciting is the English Premier League?  what does the data say about goals per game?

The Importance of Being Earnest with Your KPIs

It’s World Cup time once again, and a prime opportunity to revisit the importance of having the right KPIs to measure your performance (football team, website, marketing campaign, or whichever).  Take a look at these facts and apparent KPIs, taken from a recent World Cup soccer match, and notice how it’s possible to completely avoid what your data is actually telling you. 

*  One goalkeeper made nine saves during the match, which is three more than any other goalkeeper in the World Cup so far.

* One team had 26 shots in the game – without scoring – which is the most so far in this World Cup, and equals Portugal in their game against England in 2006.  The other team had just 13 shots in the game, and only four on target.

*  One team had just 33% possession:  they had the ball for only 30 minutes out of the 90-minute game

* One team had eight corners; the other managed just one.

A graph may help convey some additional data, and give you a clue as to the game (and the result).

If you look closely, you’ll note that the team in green had four shots on target, while other team only managed three saves.

Hence the most important result in the game – the number of goals scored – gets buried (if you’re not careful) and you have to carry out additional analysis to identify that Mexico won 1-0, scoring in the first half and then holding onto their lead with only 33% possession.