iteration, errors and the entrepreneur

Ignorance, Iteration and the

EntrepreneurPaul Kedrosky

Apr 17/08

Four Postulates

Postulate #1

Postulate #2

Far better an approximate

answer to the right question,

which is often vague, than an

exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be

made precise.J. Tukey (1962), Annals of Mathematics and Statistics 33:1-67

Postulate #3

"What the deuce is it to me? You say that we go round

the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make

a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work."                 -- Sherlock Holmes in "A Study in Scarlet", Arthur Conan Doyle

Postulate #4

IgnoranceQuestionsFocusOptimism

How You Do What

You Do

If I am interested in, say, the

distribution of the intensities of hurricanes, I cannot just “collect data more frequently”: I

will just have to wait for the next hurricane to arrive.

Source: R. Rebonatto, Plight of the Fortune-Tellers (2007)

Gorillas in our midst

ScratchPeripheralPerspectiveDataGorillasIterate

Tomorrow is going to be

wonderful since today,

I do not understand anything.

- Niels Bohr

A challenge.

paul@kedrosky.com