[jjoonathan]

> This way of thinking is invaluable.

Is it the way of thinking or the things you assumed the business already had that were invaluable? You assumed

* The existence of a large enough steady stream of paying customers to quickly gather statistics on. "Steady" is especially atypical in many environments.

* Enough runway that you can afford to tackle issues one-by-one (i.e. using a control) rather than scrambling and guessing at what is going to work. If users come in "bursts" due to marketing campaigns or whatever then this issue is compounded because each burst can cost a significant fraction of your runway.

* The business is at steady state (e.g. you aren't planning a "grab the market" phase that runs at a loss and then a "make money" phase that leverages the brand recognition, network effects, etc that you've built)

[dammitcoetzee]

I assumed all those things in my hypothetical example application of the scientific method to a decision. I'm not really certain what you're getting at?

The article linked above already goes into some detail as to how to use this to simply evaluate an idea. I was just expounding on another possible use just to show how invaluable this is. Heck you can even use it in relationships. You can tell if someone is lying. You can use it to tell if people like you. You can even use it to lose weight. I'm using it right now to see if I need to drink more water daily or if something else is wrong. It's basically a super power.

[simoncarter]

That the assumptions you made are not necessarily feasible/possible/correct in a real world, startup scenario.