Everything We Know (So Far) About Obama’s Big Data Tactics - ProPublica
►http://www.propublica.org/article/everything-we-know-so-far-about-obamas-big-data-operation
Avi Feller, a graduate student in statistics at Harvard who has worked on this kind of modeling, compared it to medical research.
“The statistics of drug trials are very similar to the statistics of experiments in campaigns,” he said. “I have some cancer drug, and I know it works well on some people—for whom is the cancer drug more or less effective?”
“Campaigns have always been about trying to persuade people. What’s new here is we’ve spent the time and energy to go through this randomization process,” Slaby said.