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Two of the most powerful words ever

What if?
 

What if I try this? What if I do it this way? What if I try it, even though I’ve been told it can't possibly work? What if they’re wrong? What if it does work? What if what I've been taught is wrong, or incomplete? Have any real advances ever been made without someone asking, what if?

tommylion

Showing 2 responses by noske

noske
783 posts
 

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noske
783 posts
 

I understand the concept of "what if" I don’t use it. Instead I ask "what are the factors" and develop a list. From the list a group of experiments are developed which will tell what the "Magnitude" of each factor is. Once you know the magnitude of the factors you can use them for design work.

@audio-union

Yes. Similar in econometrics (and time series analysis) where it is dangerous to include variables (factors) just to see "what if".

There must be a causal relationship, otherwise statistically significant correlations that are totally spurious and silly can be surprisingly easy to find.

This problem is exacerbated by many levels of magnitude with the popularity of A.I. and neural networks which can easily lead to data-mining. Because they are "dumb".

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