Statistics Hell

Death, tax and statistics.

I was working on a marketing project where I need to analyze survey results. The service I am using is SurveyMonkey. They make it easy to conduct surveys. However, the hard part is the analysis.

It seems every number has its own story. Take the sum, they are like a diamond, shine in which way you look at it. Combined with our user profile data, I have segment the customers answers by all sorts of things, age, race, sex, URL referrer, account level, OS, online avtivity level, previous engagement with us, you name it. And I am clueless. One number tells one thing, ten numbers tell me more than enough I can handle. The trend flips like chicken on a hot stove. I wonder if there is any software package that can give a meaning to this random foolishness.

The only useful thing seems to be the comments added by the user. They are not many, people are lazy. But when they do, they demonstrate a raw form of satisfaction or dislike. Sometimes they are funny too.

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