42. What is Randomness?
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Randomness is when things happen unpredictably without any apparent order or pattern. For example, when flipping a coin ten times, the outcome of one flip does not tell you anything about the outcome of the next flip.
Is life truly random? Why do some people get extremely lucky, and some get a lot of misfortune? I'm not sure if the correct answer is philosophical or statistical.
Einstein did not like the idea of randomness. He famously said, “God does not play dice with the universe.”
However, marketers seek randomness in many situations to ensure fairness, unbiased results, and valid comparisons.
For A/B Testing, we randomly assign users to different test groups so that we know that the differences in user behavior are due to changes in the marketing elements being tested, not pre-existing biases.
When conducting surveys or gathering customer feedback, we select respondents randomly to ensure that the data is representative of the entire population.
We choose winners randomly for sweepstakes or prize giveaways in promotions to ensure fairness.
How is this randomness-on-demand created?
Through mathematical formulas that generate numbers that appear unpredictable and lacking any pattern. For example, in any spreadsheet, you can generate a random number between zero and one using the formula RAND.
Although not truly random because these formulae use a seed number as a starting value, for practical marketing purposes, they lead to honest, representative, and unbiased outcomes.