The statisticians

Abstract

This article is written solely for the use of the hundreds of direct marketers who have no formal training in statistics, but who may have been inadvertently exposed to, and perhaps permanently frightened by, the equations in the Allenby Blattberg article “A New Theory Of Direct Market Testing” (in JDM 1;4) or by the Don Morrison and Richard Colombo article in this issue on the same subject. This article is an attempt to let “the rest of us” in on what the academics are saying about us and our business. Absolutely no prior statistical knowledge is required and professional statisticians are urged not to peek—or nit pick the liberties taken by the author. The author wishes to thank all of the consultants within David Shepard Associates who contributed to this article, in particular Andrew Deutch, Barry Mark, and George Orme. Our own statistician, Bruce Ratner, prefers to side with the statisticians, and shares no responsibility for this work.