Lesson 1 of 7 · Three checks, and the order to run them in
Two things that both went viral
From Three Checks Before You Back a Trend: Something new is growing fast and everyone is arguing about whether it matters. This course gives you three checks you can run yourself. You practise on measured cases from the last twenty years, including two that grew enormously, looked unstoppable, and fell. By the end you will not call the winner every time. You will stop being fooled twice by the same shape.
Two things that both went viral
- Course: 7 lessons
- Time: ~40 min
- Free: This lesson, no account
- Built on: Publicly measured cases
You already know the rule people reach for. If a thing is growing fast while being bad, it must be real — nobody puts up with bad for nothing.
Hold on to that rule. You are going to use it in a second, on two curves.
Both of these grew fast. Both of them were bad. Only one is still running.
AN EXAMPLE · Nine weeks, two products
These two sets of numbers are made up, so that nothing distracts from the shape. Real, dated cases start in the next lesson.
Weekly visitors, in thousands, for nine weeks.
Product A 40 120 62 210 95 340 150 420 205
Product B 45 124 58 216 50 332 41 412 28
Read them before you go on. One of these two is still running today.
You get one answer. Nothing else about either product is known to you.
Which one survived
The peak tells you how many people tried it. The floor tells you how many came back.
After each rush, ask one thing: are the quiet weeks busier than the last quiet weeks?
Topics: judging a trend, reading a growth curve, evidence before commitment, deciding with incomplete data, interactive