Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik

A rare exception, a personal post on an otherwise non-personal blog.

This is our beautiful daughter Damini…..

Damini turned five recently. Tomorrow she goes for the third major surgery of her young life. She was born with a congenital nevi (nevus) that covered most of her right forehead area through to her eye lid. She has had two surgeries and a skin graft to remove the nevi over the course of the last 18 months. Thanks to those we don’t have to worry about any life threatening impacts from the nevi.

My little Damini is the bravest person I know. Amazingly she never complains about pain after her surgeries and never cries, even though stitches cover most of her forehead area and recovery is tough. Her strength and resilience is a source of deep inspiration for me. She is also the source of the passion I have for work, life, and beyond.

As a human, and a father, dealing with this on behalf of my daughter is the hardest thing I have done in my life. I only wish that I could be as resilient as she is in dealing with all this.

I’ll be off the blog for the next week.

The extraordinary Eric Peterson has posted a very detailed and strong dissent to my recent post ranking Top Analytics Blogs. He adds more wisdom and perspective to the problems with my methodology, he adds to the ones I had already identified in my post.

(Important: If you have not already read my posting and methodology used please read it first, click here. Then before your read any further please read Eric’s perspective: Okay, you're gonna think I'm a jerk for saying this …. I know this sounds cumbersome but I promise you it will be worth it. If you don’t think it was worth it please email me and I will paypal you a small US dollar amount for your efforts. :~) I would have posted excerpts from Eric’s post here but I did not want to insert any bias that excerpts always somehow end up doing.)

I am a novice blogger and I really am feeling my way out in this new space. I would love to get your comments and thoughts and advice for me. Reporting and analysis is really hard and it is all about making choices, and each one of us will make different choices.  My comment on Eric’s post is below (remember to read his post first). What do you think about it? Did I strike the right balance? Did I express my point of view clearly? Would you have reacted differently?

I was even toying with not writing this post (my blog is going to be different, it focuses on learning and sharing). Is this post a distraction? I am really new and want to learn and I will deeply appreciate your perspective.

I'll be the first to comment Eric. I don't like the title of your blog. You are not a jerk. Respectful healthy debate is good and your post is exactly that and if you were "attacking" me, I welcome that. In fact it is an honor to be attacked by such a well respected authority in our field such as yourself.

My post was both a primer in making choices and a quick lesson in reporting and how hard it is to good reporting. You have added to that debate by providing some great flaws of my methodology (in addition to the ones I had pointed to in my blog post) which is great.

I had six tips, which I used for my list:

1. Global standards and benchmarks are great because people buy into them more easily
2. Simplicity always wins over complexity, because what people understand better they are more likely to action
3. Judgment should be applied with a lot of careful consideration because reasonable people might disagree with someone they don't know
4. In any report context is king, provide the right context
5. Be aware of hidden agendas, your's and those of others
6. Be open and up front with your assumptions

Of all of the above, and after digesting your feedback, I would still do exactly what I did and stress #1, #3 and #5.

I think the criteria you are suggested are great, but since no one on earth knows I exist I was going for credibility and my hypothesis was that independence (from my opinions) would earn me the attention of my dear readers. That's it.

Also it was my bet that my criteria would drive quality over time, everyone wants to be loved and on the list. I noticed yesterday that three sites who did not make it to my list because they were not coded right (including yours) would be now on the list because they have fixed Technorati tags, which is fabulous because it means you'll be on my list in July.

It would have been easy for me to create a list where I showed up first, and I would, but that was not the point. : ) I was also aware of all the blogs you list as missing because they are on my blogroll.

Thanks again for the opportunity to engage in respectful healthy debate Eric.

-Avinash.
PS: I will disagree with you on one small point: Marshall (WebMetricsGuru) is very much a relevant web analytics blogger. And he is web analytics. Every single post he makes is somehow connected to numbers and, as I mentioned in one of my posts, he makes it fun by running hitwise numbers on Angelina's baby or teaching about measuring search demand by using the Stanley Cup example. Besides there are no "pure play" web analytics bloggers, we all have our indulgences and we are off topic so much (self included).

Please post your comments and feedback.