Seattle Method

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. ...

An agent performs a specific task on behalf of another.  An agent could be a person or a thing such as a machine that takes an active role or produces a specified effect. A computer program that acts for a user or other program or platform in a relationship of agency to perform some action is an agent, a software agent. An agent is an entity capable of sensing the state of its environment and acting upon it based on a set of specified rules and perhaps a model. Remember that an agent performs specific tasks on behalf of another in order to achieve some agreed upon goal established by the principal that employs the agent and the agent which will act in behalf of the principle. A computer software agent could have intelligence, could understand machine readable knowledge for some area of knowledge represented using some knowledge representation approach, might have the capabilities to process logic, might be able to understand a model, and might otherwise be able to amplify the intel...

This overview is an attempt to take the work that I have done to understand XBRL-based reports and back into a framework for explaining those reports to accountants and software engineers building software for accountants.  The sources of the information provided below are my " lab notebook " from December 2007 to October 2022; my Digital Financial Reporting blog from October 2022 until January 2025; Mastering XBRL-based Digital Financial Reporting ; and finally my Seattle Method  documentation. What I have tried to do is take the seemingly hundreds of incomplete, far too technical, typically nonstandard explanations that I have come across; take the good/best ideas from each, make improvements to those explanations, and resynthesize the information into a form that is useful to me and perhaps useful to other business professionals which have a liberal arts education (i.e. not a technical oriented computer science education).  How my conclusions were reached are generall...

Logic is a formal communications tool that defines the rules of correct reasoning.  Logical reasoning is about arriving at a conclusion in a rigorous way.  Inference is the steps in logical reasoning.  There two broad categories of logical reasoning: deductive and non-deductive. 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.  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, abductive, and analogy. The elements of logic are the fundamental building blocks of logical theories that describe the logical concep...

The elements of logic are the fundamental building blocks of logical theories that describe the logical conceptualization of some system that is natural or designed (a.k.a. man-made). A logical system is a type of designed system.  The elements of logic can also describe knowledge within some area of knowledge using these building blocks. Here is a list of those building blocks, the elements of logic: Logical statement : A logical statement is a proposition, claim, assertion, belief, idea, or fact about or related to the area of knowledge to which the logical conceptualization relates.  A logical statement is a declarative sentence.  Not all sentences are statements; for example, a question such as "What is your name?", or a command such as "Stop!", are not statements.  There are five broad categories of logical statements: (these can be thought of as logical molecules) Terms : Terms are important logical statements that define ideas or "things" used by a...

A system is a set of interrelated and interdependent elements (a.k.a. parts, things), groups (a.k.a. types, categories, sets) into which the elements fall, and interaction patterns that describe the interactions between the different types of elements within a system. A system act according to a set of known rules to form a unified whole.  A system has boundaries.  A system can be natural, such as the solar system, or designed by humans, such as a bicycle. A system tends to have some deliberate, intentional aim; the goal(s) and/or objective(s) of the system. A natural system is a system that occurs naturally (i.e. no human involvement in the natural system).  A designed system is a system intentionally created by humans (i.e. does not otherwise exist in nature).  A logical system is a type of designed system based on logic. A designed system is engineered to meet particular set of needs and can be adjusted or redesigned. Systems evolve over time. A logical system can...

Knowledge representation is simply organizing knowledge related to some area of knowledge into some physical form.  There are a number of different approaches that a knowledge representation might take, each approach having a different level of expressivity and reasoning capability.  These different knowledge representation approaches form a spectrum.  The following is a graphic which shows the expressivity and reasoning capability of different knowledge representation approaches: The following is a brief description of each of the different knowledge representation approaches which will help you understand the relative expressivity and reasoning capability of each approach: Name authority : A name authority provides what amounts to a dictionary or list which amounts to a flat inventory of terms with no relations expressed between the terms. This can be thought of as a controlled vocabulary. Thesaurus : A thesaurus provides a dictionary similar to a name authority but t...

An area of knowledge is a highly organized socially constructed aggregation of shared knowledge (a.k.a. corpus) for a distinct subject matter.  Subject matter experts (SMEs) create, use, and maintain an area of knowledge. An area of knowledge has a specialized insider vocabulary, underlying assumptions (axioms, theorems, constraints, assertions, restrictions), and persistent open questions that have not necessarily been resolved (i.e. flexibility is necessary).  You can think about an area of knowledge as being characterized in a spectrum with two extremes: Kind area of knowledge: clear rules, lots of patterns, lots of rules, repetitive patterns, and unchanging tasks. Wicked area of knowledge: obscure data, few or no rules, constant change, and abstract ideas. Stakeholders of a system need to be in agreement as to an undisputed core knowledge of an area of knowledge. Sensemaking is the process of determining the knowledge, or deeper meaning or significance or essence, of the c...

Knowledge is a form of familiarity with information from some specific area or corpus. Knowledge is often understood to be awareness of facts, having learned skills, or having gained experience using the things and the state of affairs (situations) within some area of knowledge. They call people familiar with knowledge within some area of knowledge a subject matter expert (SME). Knowledge of facts is distinct from opinion or guesswork by virtue of justification or proof.  Knowledge is objective.  Opinions and guesswork are subjective.   In our case we are talking about certain specific knowledge, the facts that make up that knowledge, being able to create a proof to show the knowledge representation of the system is complete, consistent, and precise;  and all of this logic being put into a form readable by a machine and reach a conclusion as to whether the information in the knowledge representation is functioning properly.  Effectively, a machine can read...