The title says it all, really.
I remember reading of a name for the type of quantity that you always underestimate, even when you know that it is the type of quantity that you always underestimate and so allow in your estimate for the fact that you will probably underestimate. I have a feeling it was coined by Martin Gardner. Or at least written about by him. I can’t seem to google it.
Anyone know?
If it’d been coined by GW, it’d be Misunderestering.
Otherwise I got no idea.
I’m pretty sure I first read of the term here, so there must be someone here who knows…
Hofstadter’s Law: Everything always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter’s Law into account.
It’s from his book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, and I can understand how you might confuse him with Gardner.
I read the thread title dropping the “for”, so my answer was going to be the stupidity of the American populace.
Thanks Chronos, I thought you might be the one who came through for me.
It applies extremely well to software development and debugging.
Ed
And “How much money will I need for X?”
And estimation of legal costs of litigation, which is the context which gave rise to my query.
You made me think of feature films: “X film is over budget by $30 million dollars and 60 days.”
Well, what else is new?
50% of the work takes 99% of the time.
The other 50% takes the other 99%
Car crash repairs. It might look like a ding at first blush, but it’s usually a new grill, headlight, bumper, and chassis realignment.
Fucking deer.
The amount of water in a storm.
Now that the question has been answered, my immediate thought was calories.
The development time and cost of any military or aerospace hardware.
I think that was “misunderestimating.”
The cost of any public works project. Goes double if in a major city.
I’ve tried to read G.E.B. several times. Never got as far as that aphorism. But, and I take full credit for this, I did coin that phrase myself, and I use it in my courses all the time. I call it Rule #1. I teach in the College of Education, and it refers to pretty much anything a teacher plans.
I’ve always heard it as “Take your best estimate, and double it.” For some projects it’s more like triple.
Hmm, I thought you were trying to get at Regression to the Mean, but I don’t know Gardner.