Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

More on Assumptions

More on Assumptions

It is cold today and almost the end of May. Forty-Seven (47) degrees and it drizzled all day. No wonder there are toranados further south. Imagine that ninety-degree (90) weather smashing into fifty -degree (50) weather.

Didn’t do much… stayed inside and tended to the hearth. Wife and I took a trip to town but mostly stayed home…. The blog on assumptions got some interest, enough to get me to stress a couple of points.

Anything we consider that has an element of futurity is an assumption. “The sun will come up tomorrow is an assumption.” I fairly reliable one but still an assumption.

All assumptions should be based on an expectation of truth. Assuming that a dog has wings is not an assumption….it is absurd. We use assumptions as proxy facts, that is substitutes for facts that we are uncertain of.

If something has already happened but is being concealed from us…. Like a state secret, we need to fill in the blanks with assumptions in order to fill the data field to the solution equation and solve the problem.

Sometimes the facts are available but expensive to get or painful or difficult to obtain. If you want to solve the problem pay the price, suck it up or run down the facts. Don’t make assumptions about facts that are out there just because they are not readily or easily available.

In the decision making process the first step is to define the problem. A good way to frame a problem statement is to say…. “I need to determine the best way to…”

The next step is to gather facts bearing on the problem…

Where there are holes in the facts….ie they have an element of futurity or are closely guarded secretive things that somebody already knows but won’t reveal, then by all means make recourse to assumptions.

Then list the possibllities, show their advantages and disadvantages, compare them with one another, reach a conclusion of which one optimizes the solution, and make a recommendation. At this point you know the best (optimal) answer however it remains to work out a plan of action and get others to act on it... if it requires more than one person to execute.,