Leland Torrence wrote:
> I do think the forward and back flow in deciding what is relevant or not (I like the simple example with percent reminder of cat/pig/dog) is key to doing fast budgets and estimating for planning purposes.
Yes, I agree fully. Up to now I had thought of this as a recursive 
process, but forward-back flow sounds less abstract. I looked into the 
Numenta site, interesting open policy toward use of their code
http://www.numenta.com/ (I like to include the URL for those who may 
have e-mail programs that don't carry the hyperlink... my sense of a 
need for redundancy in communications)... regardless, my impression is 
that the software is not much past a souped up version of character 
recognition as was used in the handwriting for a Palm. So what I came 
away with was an appreciation of modeling processes that our wetware 
brains use by which to presume that we are able to predict what will 
happen in the future... and that is what estimating is about, at least 
to me, developing models by which to interpret patterns and intuit 
future outcomes, then attach cost/money to that.
> I am also fascinated with what could be "seen" if we could focus on "causes" that are typically not relevant to the brain.
I agree with this in many ways... when I played Railroad Tycoon a lot I 
began to see patterns in the management of complex systems, particularly 
at points where the complexity went over a tipping point into chaos and 
the system fell apart. I began seeing estimating differently from that 
experience. It also lead me to developing charts and graphs by which to 
monitor the estimate/bid process. So, yes, to see beyond what we usually 
perceive as relevant is important, but we also need to be cautious that 
there can always be a black swan.

Later,
Ken

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