[Sohakes]

> Larger lunch tables were "driving more than a 10% difference in performances". A fact that would probably have gone undetected without such data analysis.

Isn't this poor data analysis, though? Correlation doesn't imply causation and all that. I think it's more plausible that people who sit at 12-person lunch table have more friends on the company, and that drives performance up, than the lunch table affecting performance. I mean, it could be any reason, but I highly doubt the lunch table is the cause of the higher or lower performance.

[megaremote]

Depends how they studied it. If they changed a few floors of the building to larger lunch tables, and observe the difference on those floors, keeping everything else the same, they would have a good case. If they difference stayed for months after the change, it further strengthens the case.

[mesozoic]

They still have to apply a random sampling or you risk the same correlations in the new data.