What's with the school algebra?
\(f(x) = y\) is a simplification, but it's a useful simplification. Pragmatic analysis strives the mask the tedious, complicated stuff with succinct distillations.
In this case, working backwards- \(y\) is some usable result to be found. It can have many components.
- \(x\) is what we have to work with. It also can have many components. Some of them were already to hand. Some are there but buried. Others needed to be acquired. Almost all of them will need to be converted.
- \(f\) is the function that makes the conversion \(x => y\). It also can have many components.
The principle involved in dealing with all the little pieces is the divide-and-conquer idea of analysis. And a simple question keeps the process from going off the rails:
How does this step bring us closer to a usable result?
Black box warnings: hide it in plain sight
My sources
- Adams
- Scores and performances
- Alexander
- Pattern language
- Allen
- Two minute drill
- Altshuler
- Disjoint incrementalism
- Interest group liberalism
- Aristotle
- Analysis
- Ends/means
- Arete
- Auden
- Quotidian
- Bach
- Background detail
- Benoit
- Chaos has structure
- Berlin
- Hedgehogs and foxes
- Birman
- Naming of part
- Borges
- Combinatorics
- Information retrieval
- Boyd
- OOPA
- Brand
- Tools
- Brubeck
- Multitasking
- Buddha
- Renunciation
- Burnham
- The planning fallacy
- Carson
- Unconsidered contingencies
- Caesar
- Ablative absolute
- PR
- Latin
- Club of Rome
- Tyranny of trajectories
- Churchill
- Action this day
- Cook and Teetor
- Hidden didactics
- Corey
- Persona
- Darwin
- Close observation
- Didion
- Dispassion
- Dirac
- Elusive monopole
- Logical conclusions
- Disney
- Make believe
- Junior Woodchuck Manual
- Dodgson
- Definition
- Drucker, M.
- Irreverence
- Drucker, P.
- What is our business?
- Knowledge workers
- Meetings
- Efficiency
- Dylan
- Genius steals
- Einstein
- What if
- Perspective
- Eisenhower
- Detail
- Euclid
- Proof
- Euripides
- Ineluctability
- Fabos
- Impresarios
- Farhquar
- Coherence
- Ford
- Parsimony
- Dead hand of the past
- Fourier
- Decomposition
- Gamow
- Infinities
- Gertsner
- Policy
- Iconoclasm
- Glass
- Repetition as narrative
- Gödel
- Self referencing
- Gosset
- Distributions
- Gould
- Monasticism
- Grant
- Largeness of ends
- Economy of means
- Grimm Brothers
- Willing suspension of disbelief
- Guralnick
- Practice
- Hand
- Cost benefit analysis
- Hardin
- The visible hand
- Heisenberg
- Pick one
- Hirshfield
- Abstraction
- Hiroshigi
- Framing
- Hofstadter
- Recursion
- Homer
- Hubris
- Odysseus
- Wounded pride
- Anger
- Empty suits
- Hutton
- Uniformitarianism
- Jeffers
- Imperialism
- Job
- Force majeure
- Johnson
- Thin skin thick skin
- Joy
- Habit
- Jeunger
- Play
- Kahnemann
- Cognitive bias
- Limits of intuition
- Kahn
- Unthinkablity
- Kernighan
- Pipes
- Debugging
- Graceful failure
- Biscuit cutters
- Keynes
- Foreseeability
- King Hall Faculty
- Induction
- Elements
- Primacy of questions
- Kirshner
- Logistics
- MTCO
- Kissinger
- Lazy evaluation
- Korynta
- Visual imagination
- Knuth
- Tool making
- Batching
- Audience
- Kidder
- Pinball
- Kuhn
- Paradigm shift
- Leopold
- Tyranny of the complete set
- Machiavelli
- Ends means
- Magritte
- Treachery of Images
- Marx
- Diagnosis vs prescription
- McHarg
- Hermeneutics
- McNamara
- Tool centric solutions
- McPhee
- Unfolding
- Melville
- Head fake
- Nash
- End of the day
- Newton
- Method of successive approximation
- Occam
- Parsimony
- Nominalism
- Odum
- Closed networks
- Power law
- Ohno
- Root cause
- Just in time
- Patton
- Practice over theory
- Pareto
- 80/20
- Pearl
- Directed acyclic graphs
- Plato
- Abstraction
- Dialectic
- Polya
- Heuristics
- Powell
- Bending the map
- Coloring the map
- Rumsfeld
- Empty quadrants
- Rembrandt
- Edgelessness
- Reynolds
- Phase change
- Sapolsky
- System integration
- Feedback
- Hierarchy
- Schrödinger
- What if
- Schultz
- Credulity
- Shannon
- Entropy as information
- Simon, C.
- Dopamine
- Simon, P.
- Filters
- Simon, H.
- Bounded rationality
- Smith
- The invisible hand
- Socrates
- Principle
- Spengler
- Long view
- Stegner
- Rosetta facts
- Sun
- Indirection
- Swift
- Gatekeeping
- Logical conclusions
- Tukey
- EDA
- Tufte
- Ink to info ratio
- Taleb
- Fat tails
- Tolstoy
- Forces and personalities
- Tarsski
- Sets
- Thucydides
- Realism
- Veblen
- Pride of place
- Vermeer
- Objectivity
- Wellington
- Close run things
- Whyburn
- Defined terms
- Edge cases
- Wickham
- Syntax is not grammar
- Naming of parts
- Wolfram
- Cellular automatons
- Zipf
- Power law distributions
We've just remembered why we always have done it this way
In the late 1990s I worked as a public utilities regulator in California. Every week I would receive a dozen copies of documents ranging from a single sheet to thick stacks. After setting aside a few copies for various purposes eight were sent to recycling.
Finally, I asked:
Why 12 copies?
No one seemed to know until someone thought to ask the most senior clerk. She said
That’s the most copies that you can type with a carbon-set
The carbon-set was a stack of alternating typing paper and carbon paper used to produce copies on typewriters. It predated office copiers. Like the two-space after a period rule, the technology’s influence lasted far longer than the technology itself.
More business processes than we might care to admit to ourselves have similar rationales. Recognizing and rationalizing them can lead to quicker, simpler solutions to more important problems that are ensnared by forgotten history.