[ILUG] Advertising in GMail

[John P. Looney]

On 11/21/06, Colm MacCarthaigh <colm at stdlib.net> wrote:
>
> The problem is that you are abusing statistics.


 He didn't offer statistics.

Although it's possible
> to make general statements about the level of accuracy of statistically
> aggregated data it is *never* appropriate to make inferences from that
> to any one particular datapoint.
>
> So, although I can say that 95% of ILUG subscribers are male, that
> doesn't mean "particular ILUG subscriber is male" is a "good guess",
> hell it's not even appropriate to say that "there's a 95% probability
> that this particular ILUG subscriber is male". Those statements are
> meaningless. The person either is or isn't male, there's no intermediate
> state.


 Both statements have meaning. If you choose to pretend they've no meaning,
that's a completely separate problem.

 GeoLocation is wrong in many cases, mostly for users of multinational
companies corporate networks which don't have local proxies. But, that's a
pretty small proportion of users. Certainly, it's financially worthwhile for
advertisers to use GeoCoding. And that's a real quality metric.

 In a test of some commercial systems by the US govt., between 80 and 90% of
IPs were accurate to within 300 meters (for 2000 random IPs across the US).
That's pretty accurate.

John