Control

Categories: Company Management

This should be the name of the mysterious head of some super-secret, government trouble-shooting team, a la the Mission Impossible team, as in “Control, this is Golden Condor. Mission gone sideways. Request backup.”

It’s really the name for the procedures and preventatives we put in place when we run an experiment to make sure our results actually show that a change in one variable caused a change in another...instead of some other variable we didn’t account for muddling the results.

Controls can be things like single- and double-blinding (which limit who’s getting what treatment in an experiment), control groups (which are groups that get no treatment while other groups get the fancy new pills, so we can be sure it’s the pills and not just random luck that everyone’s ear hair fell out), and careful measurement (which prevents bad data collection). Putting proper controls in place at all phases of the experiment means our results are that much more meaningful and reliable.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What is Control Value?15 Views

00:00

Finance allah shmoop what is control value dance on a

00:07

fifty shades thing Well there's a partnership a semi evil

00:10

one there was once a tv siri's It was exorbitantly

00:14

expensive to produce but everyone wanted to make it So

00:18

it ended up being made not by one studio but

00:22

by three viacom paramount disney and then news corp fox

00:27

Before it was disney news corp fox well each of

00:29

the three partners put in a third of the money

00:31

and split all the money distributions equally The problem on

00:35

the show ended up being hugely successful when it ran

00:38

for the first time on network tv so that was

00:41

great but now it's in reruns and because all three

00:43

competitors generally hate each other he's financially if their job

00:47

too none are willing to run the show a lot

00:50

on their cable network or broadcast network because then they

00:53

generate revenues for their hated competitors so they don't run

00:57

the tv series even though people want to see it

00:59

And this is a big fat bummer to the actors

01:01

writers and producers of the show who were banking on

01:05

rerun royalties to pay for their divorces if one of

01:08

the studios owned the siri's I'ii controlled it let's call

01:12

that siri's sunlight ing well then the siri's would heir

01:16

a ton more and presumably generate a ton more desperately

01:20

needed revenues What do you think divorce lawyers work for

01:23

free Well the control value of owning that asset then

01:27

is huge because if it were owned by one player

01:31

well then that player could run it again and again

01:33

and again and again on their network like think big

01:36

bang on tbs and then monetize that asset and massively

01:40

so there's Incremental control value with the well controlling a

01:45

property And yet it's not to be confused with remote

01:48

control value which is about a buck twenty five on 00:01:51.209 --> [endTime] ebay

Find other enlightening terms in Shmoop Finance Genius Bar(f)