-
Code@MIT 20252025In A/B testing, statistical power depends on both the variance of estimated impacts and the distribution of true impacts. A low variance metric can have low power if true impacts on the metric tend to be small, while a high variance metric can have high power if true impacts on the metric tend to be large. Traditional power calculations, however, focus solely on the variance of estimated impacts. They compute
-
Code@MIT 20252025User-randomized A/B testing, while the gold standard for online experimentation, faces significant limitations when legal, ethical, or practical considerations prevent its use. Item-level randomization offers an alternative but typically suffers from high variance and low statistical power due to skewed distributions and limited sample sizes. We here introduce Regular Balanced Switchback Designs (RBSDs)
-
Code@MIT 20252025This paper examines the effectiveness of stratification in experimental design using evidence from multiple large-scale experiments. We analyze data from experiments ranging from approximately 30,000 to 180,000 units across different business contexts. Our results show that pre-stratification and post-stratification achieve virtually identical precision improvements - largest in smaller samples (10% improvement
-
Code@MIT 20252025Determining appropriate experimental duration remains a challenging problem in online experimentation. While experimenters ideally would know in advance how long to run experiments in order to inform confident business decisions, many factors affecting conclusiveness of their results are difficult to predict prior to the experiment. Consequently, experimentation services develop 'in-flight' tools that suggest
-
KDD 2025 Workshop on AI for Supply Chain2025Effective attribution of causes to outcomes is crucial for optimizing complex supply chain operations. Traditional methods, often relying on waterfall logic or correlational analysis, frequently fall short in identifying the true drivers of performance issues. This paper proposes a comprehensive framework leveraging data-driven causal discovery to construct and validate Structural Causal Models (SCMs).
Related content
-
October 13, 2021Amazon Scholar David Card wins half the award, while academic research consultant Guido Imbens shares in the other half.
-
September 1, 2021Amazon’s scientists have developed a variety of scientific models to help customers get the most out of their membership.
-
July 26, 2021In a paper published at INFORMS in 2020, the Amazon senior principal scientist and his co-authors factored in both revenue and "the expected utility to the customer from the purchase."
-
July 20, 2021The senior economist knows what it means to pursue a career path like hers, and she’s determined to help others along the way.
-
May 3, 2021The Amazon economist says lessons from her mother taught her a lot about how the world works, and why economics plays such a vital role.
-
April 28, 2021Yale economics professor Dirk Bergemann elected to American Academy of Arts & Sciences; University of Pennsylvania computer science professor Michael Kearns elected to National Academy of Sciences.