Experiments: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful

Through the years, Linda Rising has given presentations about the use of stories instead of science in the industry, so in this session she has decided to be more helpful and talk about experiments. There's an increasing emphasis on experiments as a part of being more innovative but sometimes Linda says we need a nudge and some examples to help us get going. No, this is not too rigorous! Rather than talking about statistics, she is going to explore cheap, easy experiments—what to do, what to be aware of, and our own cognitive biases, including the confirmation bias that does its best to keep us from seeing what's new in our environment. We all need strategies for dealing with that—like involving others who are really doing it. Linda’s goal is to encourage everyone to be a bit more methodical in decision-making and to replace “That won't work” with “How can we test it?” Leave with a plan for one or more experiments to run in your workplace. Improve your scientific vocabulary a bit, and learn some of the cognitive biases that get in the way of good decision-making.