Wait, what?

This is not a post on the popular book that bears that title. (I did write about that here:  uncommoncontent.blogspot.com.) This is my reaction to the number a billion that sounds impressive but is really completely meaningless without context.*

When I shared a link today on LI, it offered me three other links to read. Among them was a FastCompany article, "Six Ways YouTube Is Primed For The Future (And Four Areas That Need Work)" Now read what it says for the fifth and see if you have the same reaction I do:

5. YouTube’s rebuilt algorithms have led viewers to watch 1 billion hours of video a day. YouTube is optimized for what it calls “watch time,” which encompasses what users view, how long they tune in, the length of their overall YouTube session, and so forth. Together, these signals help YouTube algorithms decide which videos a user is most likely to watch shortly after they’re posted and which will lead to the longest overall viewing period.

Do you get what's missing here? How many viewers are there? How many hours did they watch before the algorithms were rebuilt?

Without those two pieces of information, we really have no way of knowing how much of an advance one billion hours of video a day represents. Sure, it sounds like a lot, but we don't know if it represents the two billion people watching an average of a half an hour a day or one billion watching an average of an hour, or half a million watching two hours.

 We also don't know if the actual goal was to bring in more viewers or to keep the ones already watching on the channel for longer. That's a pretty important piece of context, as well, if one is to judge if the algorithms are accomplishing what the company intended for them. The article does refer to 800 million YouTube consumers of music but doesn't clarify whether or not that represents the viewers in total and if that number represents an increase over the number before the adjustment to the algorithms.

The bottom line is this: Don't be dazzled by numbers, no matter how large, that are presented without the relevant context.


*Related post http://writewaypro.blogspot.com/2016/10/data-visualization-you-have-to-c-it-to.html
http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2017/09/missingness-at-museum.html

Keeping your identity

Clones, robots, alien shapeshifters, or disembodied consciousness take over people's identities in shows such as Star Trek and Doctor Who. They can then take over the lives of the people they've duplicated, particularly when they have access to their memories. How can anyone defend himself when he can't tell friend from foe?

In real life, most of us don't fear having someone else show up in person claiming to be us. But we are concerned about identity theft. Our digital world makes it all too easy for the bad guys to hack into personal information posted online, as well as financial information that we can think is secure. The cost of identity theft can be huge when hackers get access to our credit cards, debit cards, and bank accounts.

Read more in Your Personal Online Guardian