Mental Model · 02
Why Precision Matters
Generalizing serves us, but imprecision skews expectations and makes comparison dangerous. Exactness as a discipline.
It’s important for human beings to generalize; we need not see every instance to understand the general rule, and this works to our advantage. With generalizing, however, comes a subset of errors. Imprecision often manifests itself in quantitative measures being represented in natural language terms. Imprecision allows for ambiguity and can skew stated expectations across different people. Imprecision makes the act of comparing difficult even dangerous.
¶The Dangers of Lorem Ipsum
Some designers view the use of dummy text as a philosophical statement, reducing content to a secondary role and thereby diminishing the true importance of copy in a website. If the design is good, the theory goes, then it won’t really matter what the copy says.
That’s obviously not true.
- Lorem Ipsum is an example of imprecision that skews expectations in how something works and why it matters.
- It creates a false sense of function and creates a rigid set of requirements that are not reflective of reality.
- Lorem Ipsum creates more problems that it solves and is suggested to never be used.
¶James March on the false record effect:
False Record Effect: A group of managers of identical (moderate) ability will show considerable variation in their performance records in the short run. Some will be found at one end of the distribution and will be viewed as outstanding; others will be at the other end and will be viewed as ineffective. The longer a manager stays in a job, the less the probable difference between the observed record of performance and actual ability. Time on the job increased the expected sample of observations, reduced expected sampling error, and thus reduced the change that the manager (or moderate ability) will either be promoted or exit.
Hero Effect: Within a group of managers of varying abilities, the faster the rate of promotion, the less likely it is to be justified. Performance records are produced by a combination of underlying ability and sampling variation. Managers who have good records are more likely to have high ability than managers who have poor records, but the reliability of the differentiation is small when records are short.