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I don't know if this is the case if I understand this algorithm correctly. Say Yellow is 50%, and Green is a 65% success rate after the behavior change, but green is 30% before the behavior change.

By sending 90% of traffic towards yellow, it's ratio will normalize towards the 50% once it has enough traffic. By sending 10% of traffic randomly, eventually the green option will reach 51%, and start taking a majority of traffic, which then will cause it to normalize at it's 65%, and be shown to a majority of users.

I think the problem might be, if you run this with a sufficiently high volume or for a long period of time, that if a behaviour change takes place it will take a long time to learn the new behaviour. Or if two options aren't actually different, it may continually flip back and fourth between two options.

Also, to me, the concept of A/B testing certain things may also have an undesired consequence. For example, I order from amazon every day, but today the but button is blue, what does that actually mean? And I go back to the site later and it's yellow again. There are still many people who get confused by seemingly innocuous changes with the way their computer interacts with them.



> Also, to me, the concept of A/B testing certain things may also have an undesired consequence. For example, I order from amazon every day, but today the but button is blue, what does that actually mean? And I go back to the site later and it's yellow again. There are still many people who get confused by seemingly innocuous changes with the way their computer interacts with them.

Proper A/B tests are supposed to be done on a per-unique-user basis. If you access the shop from the same device or user account, a well-done A/B test should consistently show you the same interface.


I agree. Sorry in this context I was referring specifically to the "in 20 lines of code article" which I don't believe had this control to it.


Until that particular test ends, and another one begins.




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