Seattle Method

Logical reasoning is about arriving at a conclusion in a rigorous way.  There two broad categories of logical reasoning: deductive reasoning   and non-deductive reasoning . Deductive reasoning provides a result that is guaranteed to be certain, therefore the result can be relied upon without doubt and humans need not be involved in a process because of the certainty of deductive reasoning.   Non-deductive reasoning, on the other hand, is not certain, meaning it could be correct but it could also be incorrect.  Non-deductive reasoning is based on probability.  Non-deductive reasoning is always fallible; there is always the possibility of error. And so non-deductive reasoning approaches must have a human in the loop to deal with that uncertainty.  There are three types of non-deductive reasoning: inductive reasoning , abductive reasoning , and analogy . A line of reasoning (a.k.a. chain of reasoning) is an explanation of an approach to solving a proble...

The comic strip below helps one understand the need for a shared set of goals and objectives for a system and the consequences for not agreeing on such shared goals and objectives.  Effective communication between stakeholder and by stakeholders to those creating the system is critically important.  Testing is a tools for verifying agreement and determining if a system is adequate to meet specified goals and objectives. For contrast, consider this project where everyone agrees with the project. If agreement is achieved it is relatively easier to move a project from one state of agreement to some other state of agreement. Additional Information: Overview  

In his book Saving Capitalism , Robert Reich describes three categories that all modern work/jobs fit into: (Robert B. Reich, Saving Capitalism , Alfred A. Knopf, page 204-206) Routine production services which entails repetitive tasks, In-person services where you physically have to be there because human touch was essential to the tasks, Symbolic-analytic services which include problem solving, problem identification, and strategic thinking that go into the manipulation of symbols (data, words, oral and visual representations). In describing the third category, symbolic-analytic services, Mr. Reich elaborates: (emphasis is mine) “In essence this work is to rearrange abstract symbols using a variety of analytic and creative tools - mathematical algorithms, legal arguments, financial gimmicks, scientific principles, powerful words and phrases, visual patterns, psychological insights, and other techniques for solving conceptual puzzles .  Such manipulations improve efficiency-ac...

A medium is a tool used to exchange information related to some subject matter between an information bearer and an information receiver. Below are some examples of traditional mediums used during the industrial age and I added a couple of new mediums that will very likely be more prominent in the information age. In order to make use of an information media effectively, the following three conditions must be satisfied: Easy for information bearer to represent information : The effort and difficulty required for the information bearer to successfully formulate the information in the medium must be as low as possible. Clear, consistent meaning : The meaning conveyed by the information bearer to the information receiver must be clear and easily followed by human beings and be consistent between different software applications. The result cannot be a "black box" or a guessing game and users of the information should not be able to derive different information/understanding simp...

Why represent information from some area of knowledge (a.k.a. body of knowledge, corpus) in the form of a machine-readable knowledge representation? How do you eliminate "wild behavior" of the stakeholders of system which make use of the knowledge representation? How is an area of knowledge created, used, and managed today? Might a machine-readable knowledge representation be superior to current approaches to representing an area of knowledge? Think about some specific area of knowledge such as a financial reporting scheme such as US GAAP or IFRS. The following tasks take place: Define: Description/specification/explanation of the terms, associations, structures, assertions, restrictions, constraints in the area of knowledge by a standards setter, regulator, or someone else creating an area of knowledge; the area of knowledge could be human readable, machine readable, or preferably machine readable form from which a human readable representation can be automatically generated...

The world is complex.  But sometimes humans can come together, leveraging the power of agreement, and agree enough to create something useful in meeting some specific important aim and satisfying some agreed upon set of goals and objectives. A kludge is an engineering/computer science term that defines what is best described as a workaround or quick-and-dirty solution that is typically clumsy, inelegant, inefficient, difficult to extend and hard to maintain; but it gets the job done. The nautical term for a kludge is jury rig. By contrast, elegance is beauty that shows unusual effectiveness, grace, and simplicity. The alternative to being a kludge is  elegant simplicity . Elegant simplicity is achieved through complexity via hard work an, clever ideas, etc. It is easy to create a system that is complex.  It is hard work to create a system that is simple.  People commonly confuse the terms "simple" and "simplistic". They do not describe the same thing. ...