“… and this way, I was able to prove, using the data provided, that the project in question had no noticeable impact on sales.”Domnall Coin watched the last slide of his presentation with a triumphant smile. This simple chart filled him with genuine pride. The clever normalization and calibration of data against the general market trend illustrated his conclusions so clearly that not only a mathematical illiterate but an illiterate in general would instantly get the message.He had to admit that his respect for this company had significantly increased since he discovered that the task provided as a recruitment testing exercise was, in fact, a perfectly camouflaged stratagem. At first, he was repulsed by its triviality; some stores used the new fancy technical solution. The task was to _demonstrate _that it led to a sales increase. Such an approach suggested that it would rather not be his dream job. However, since over the past three months the recruitment agencies and their clients had been doing their best to starve him out, he had to put down his respect for the _scientific method _and his _testing _strategies and carried on with demonstrating.There was, however, a pleasant surprise hidden in the data. With a little effort, he was able to derive from it a trend for the entire industry and, in turn, not only model sales growth over time (evident), but also to actually _test _whether the observed effect was not solely due to a general market change. All that was left was one division and a few lines of code. He saw in his imagination the person preparing the test, shaking with laughter writing “demonstrate-that” — an inconspicuous and straightforward thing, yet in catching idiots as effective as a Lotto jackpot. Everyone could demonstrate sales increase, but it had nothing to do with the installed doohickey, as sales in stores which did not implement it skyrocketed just as much. Domnall had no doubt that candidates falling into this trap were counted by a dozen.

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