Sounds easy. I wonder why this "study" doesn't mention a p value. The grant must not have been large enough to fund someone with any experience using R, or god forbid, a pencil.
On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 10:32 PM, Robert Rohde <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 8:58 PM, Brian <[email protected]> wrote: > > Quite frankly the advice that you should only use five subjects makes no > > sense. The appeal to Nielsen's authority is not going to work on me or > > anyone else who understands why the scientific method exists. It's > > unscientific thinking and it's going cause to you waste money. You're > going > > to draw conclusions based on results that simply aren't valid, and you > won't > > know it until the study is over and you didn't make progress. > > > > Careful analysis of site data could allow you to draw some conclusions. > I'm > > curious how you're planning to go about that. Dependent/independent > > variables? > > If five subjects, chosen at random, all have the same problem, then > with 95% confidence you can predict that at least half of the > population will report having this problem. > > This kind of work generally focuses on BIG problems, and you don't > need a huge sample to identify some of the most common issues. In > things like UI development it would be surprising if there weren't > complaints reported by most of the subjects. You may overlook some > other problems, but when coming up with a list of common problems to > work on, I would say that 15 subjects is plenty. > > -Robert Rohde > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > [email protected] > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
