Re:Gigerenzer’s simple rules of thumb often outperform compl...
by mjburgess on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @06:27AM
(#26327047)
I think the only reason this works is that it's a power law. A power law gives you a semi-principled way of talking about different scales: atomic, table, house, world, galaxy... The rate of the power increase corresponds to our "magnification factor"
Probably many sequences of powers works, and many bases: base^0.5, base^1, base^1.5, base^2, ...
If the estimate is 3days, then the scope is: [3, 6, 12, 24, 48, 96]
Now we have a "semi-principled" set of numbers to choose from, the estimator applies their domain knowledge to select the relevant scales: 3 to 24 say, based on "how big the project could be".
ie., is it both possibly a small change in one area (to a table), and possibly "reworking the foundations of the house" -- if so, you have the small-scale starter number, and you can dial up using this sequence to whatever magnification suits.
Probably with base pi, and sequence (0.5, 1, 2) we capture the three most relevant scales for most properly discrete software tasks. That's essentially conincidental, in that i'm sure a (2 to 4) base with several sequences would wokr.
Probably many sequences of powers works, and many bases: base^0.5, base^1, base^1.5, base^2, ...
eg., 4^0.5, 4^1, 4^1.5, 4^2, 4^2.5 = [2, 4, 8, 16, 32]
If the estimate is 3days, then the scope is: [3, 6, 12, 24, 48, 96]
Now we have a "semi-principled" set of numbers to choose from, the estimator applies their domain knowledge to select the relevant scales: 3 to 24 say, based on "how big the project could be".
ie., is it both possibly a small change in one area (to a table), and possibly "reworking the foundations of the house" -- if so, you have the small-scale starter number, and you can dial up using this sequence to whatever magnification suits.
Probably with base pi, and sequence (0.5, 1, 2) we capture the three most relevant scales for most properly discrete software tasks. That's essentially conincidental, in that i'm sure a (2 to 4) base with several sequences would wokr.