Modeels.csv

Hanlon's Razor,(1) "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by carelessness." (related: fundamental attribution error — " the tendency for people to place an undue emphasis on internal characteristics of the agent (character or intention), rather than external factors, in explaining another person's behavior in a given situation.")
Occam's Razor,(1) "Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected." (related: conjunction fallacy, overfitting, "when you hear hoofbeats, think of horses not zebras.")
Cognitive Biases,(1) "Tendencies to think in certain ways that can lead to systematic deviations from a standard of rationality or good judgments."
Arguing from First Principles,(1) "A basic, foundational, self-evident proposition or assumption that cannot be deduced from any other proposition or assumption." (related: dimensionality reduction; orthogonality; "Reasonable minds can disagree" if underlying premises differ.)
Proximate vs Root Cause,(1) "An event which is closest to, or immediately responsible for causing, some observed result. This exists in contrast to a higher-level ultimate cause (or distal cause) which is usually thought of as the 'real' reason something occurred."
Thought Experiment,(1) "considers some hypothesis, theory, or principle for the purpose of thinking through its consequences." (related: counterfactual thinking)
Systems Thinking,(1) "By taking the overall as well as its parts into account. Designed to avoid potentially contributing to further development of unintended consequences." (related: causal loop diagrams; stock and flow; Le Chatelier's principle, hysteresis — "Can't see the forest for the trees.")
Scenario Analysis,(1) "A process of analyzing possible future events by considering alternative possible outcomes." (related: "Skate to where the puck is going."; black swan theory — "a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight.")
Power-law,(1) A functional relationship between two quantities, where a relative change in one quantity results in a proportional relative change in the other quantity, independent of the initial size of those quantities: one quantity varies as a power of another." (related: Pareto distribution; Pareto principle — "for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.")
Normal Distribution,(1) "A very common continuous probability distribution...Physical quantities that are expected to be the sum of many independent processes (such as measurement errors) often have distributions that are nearly normal." (related: central limit theorem)
Sensitivity Analysis,(1) "The study of how the uncertainty in the output of a mathematical model or system (numerical or otherwise) can be apportioned to different sources of uncertainty in its inputs."
Cost-benefit Analysis,(1) "A systematic approach to estimating the strengths and weaknesses of alternatives that satisfy transactions, activities or functional requirements for a business." (related: net present value — "a measurement of the profitability of an undertaking that is calculated by subtracting the present values of cash outflows (including initial cost) from the present values of cash inflows over a period of time.", discount rate)
Lateral Thinking,(1) "Solving problems through an indirect and creative approach, using reasoning that is not immediately obvious and involving ideas that may not be obtainable by using only traditional step-by-step logic."
Divergent Thinking vs Convergent Thinking,(1) Thought process or method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions. It is often used in conjunction with its cognitive opposite, which follows a particular set of logical steps to arrive at one solution, which in some cases is a 'correct' solution." (related: groupthink; Maslow's hammer — "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.")
Scientific Method,(1) "Systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses." (related: reproducibility)
Proxy,(1) "A variable that is not in itself directly relevant, but that serves in place of an unobservable or immeasurable variable. It must have a close correlation, not necessarily linear, with the variable of interest." (related: revealed preference)
Selection Bias,(1) "The selection of individuals, groups or data for analysis in such a way that proper randomization is not achieved, thereby ensuring that the sample obtained is not representative of the population intended to be analyzed."
Response Bias,(1) "A wide range of cognitive biases that influence the responses of participants away from an accurate or truthful response."
Order of Magnitude,(1) "Estimate of a variable whose precise value is unknown is an estimate rounded to the nearest power of ten." (related: order of approximation, back-of-the-envelope calculation, dimensional analysis, Fermi problem)
Major vs Minor Facts,(1) Explains major and minor portions of the results. (related: first order vs second order effects — first order effects directly follow from a cause, while second order effects follow from first order effects.)
False Positives and False Negatives,(1) "A result that indicates a given condition has been fulfilled, when it actually has not been fulfilled...A test result indicates that a condition failed, while it actually was successful, i.e. erroneously no effect has been assumed."
Confidence Interval,(1) "Range of values (interval) that act as good estimates of the unknown population parameter; however, the interval computed from a particular sample does not necessarily include the true value of the parameter." (related: error bar)
Business Case,(1) "Captures the reasoning for initiating a project or task. It is often presented in a well-structured written document, but may also sometimes come in the form of a short verbal argument or presentation." (related: why this now?)
Opportunity Cost,(1) "The value of the best alternative forgone where, given limited resources, a choice needs to be made between several mutually exclusive alternatives. Assuming the best choice is made, it is the 'cost' incurred by not enjoying the benefit that would have been had by taking the second best available choice." (related: cost of capital)
Intuition,(1) Personal experience coded into your personal neural network. Dangerous outside the bounds of your personal experience. (related: thinking fast vs thinking slow — "a dichotomy between two modes of thought: 'System 1' is fast, instinctive and emotional; 'System 2' is slower, more deliberative, and more logical.")
Local vs Global Optimum,(1) "A solution that is optimal (either maximal or minimal) within a neighboring set of candidate solutions. This is in contrast to an optimal solution among all possible solutions, not just those in a particular neighborhood of values."
Decision Trees,(1) "A decision support tool that uses a tree-like graph or model of decisions and their possible consequences, including chance event outcomes, resource costs, and utility." (related: expected value)
Sunk Cost,(1) "A cost that has already been incurred and cannot be recovered." (related: "throwing good money after bad", "in for a penny, in for a pound")
Availability Bias,(1) "People tend to heavily weigh their judgments toward more recent information, making new opinions biased toward that latest news."
Confirmation Bias,(1) "The tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses, while giving disproportionately less consideration to alternative possibilities." (related: cognitive dissonance)
Anecdotal,(1) "Using a personal experience or an isolated example instead of a sound argument or compelling evidence."
False Cause,(1) "Presuming that a real or perceived relationship between things means that one is the cause of the other." (related: correlation does not imply causation, or in xkcd form)
Straw Man,(1) "Giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not advanced by that opponent."
Plausible,(1) Thinking that just because something is plausible means that it is true.
Likely,(1) Thinking that just because something is possible means that it is likely.
Appeal to Emotion,(1) "Manipulating an emotional response in place of a valid or compelling argument."
Ad Hominem,(1) "Attacking your opponent's character or personal traits in an attempt to undermine their argument."
Slippery Slope,(1) "Asserting that if we allow A to happen, then Z will eventually happen too, therefore A should not happen." (related: broken windows theory — "maintaining and monitoring urban environments to prevent small crimes such as vandalism, public drinking, and toll-jumping helps to create an atmosphere of order and lawfulness, thereby preventing more serious crimes from happening.")
Black and White,(1) "When two alternative states are presented as the only possibilities, when in fact more possibilities exist."
Bandwagon,(1) "Appealing to popularity or the fact that many people do something as an attempted form of validation."
The Third Story,(1) "One an impartial observer, such as a mediator, would tell; it's a version of events both sides can agree on." (related: Most Respectful Interpretation)
Active Listening,(1) "Requires that the listener fully concentrates, understands, responds and then remembers what is being said."
Trade-offs,(1) "A situation that involves losing one quality or aspect of something in return for gaining another quality or aspect."
Incentives,(1) "Something that motivates an individual to perform an action." (related: carrot and stick — "a policy of offering a combination of rewards and punishment to induce behavior.")
Unintended Consequences,(1) "Outcomes that are not the ones foreseen and intended by a purposeful action." (related: collateral damage — "Deaths, injuries, or other damage inflicted on an unintended target.", Goodhart's law — "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"; Campbell's law; cobra effect — "when an attempted solution to a problem actually makes the problem worse."; "Kick a hornet's nest.")
Weekly 1-1s,(1) "Personal conversations that can add a whole new level of speed and agility to your company."
Forcing Function,(1) "Any task, activity or event that forces you to take action and produce a result."
Directly Responsible Individual,(1) A management concept, originally championed by Apple, that good things come if someone is explicitly responsible for something. (related: diffusion of responsibility — "a sociopsychological phenomenon whereby a person is less likely to take responsibility for action or inaction when others are present."; bystander effect — "a social psychological phenomenon that refers to cases in which individuals do not offer any means of help to a victim when other people are present.")
Pygmalion Effect,(1) "The phenomenon whereby higher expectations lead to an increase in performance." (related: market pull technology policy — where the government sets future standards beyond what the current market can deliver, and the market pulls that technology into existence.; Radical Candor)
Virtual Team,(1) "A group of individuals who work across time, space and organizational boundaries with links strengthened by webs of communication technology." At least in some circumstances, it is possible to have a completely virtual team. The downsides in lack of face-to-face communication can be outweighed by the upsides in sourcing from the entire world.
Technical Debt,(1) "A concept in programming that reflects the extra development work that arises when code that is easy to implement in the short run is used instead of applying the best overall solution."
Binary Search,(1) "A search algorithm that finds the position of a target value within a sorted array. It compares the target value to the middle element of the array; if they are unequal, the half in which the target cannot lie is eliminated and the search continues on the remaining half until it is successful." (related: debugging)
Divide and Conquer,(1) "Recursively breaking down a problem into two or more sub-problems of the same or related type, until these become simple enough to be solved directly. The solutions to the sub-problems are then combined to give a solution to the original problem."
Design Pattern,(1) "The re-usable form of a solution to a design problem." (related: anti-pattern — "a common response to a recurring problem that is usually ineffective and risks being highly counterproductive.", dark pattern — "user interfaces designed to trick people.")
Black box,(1) "a device, system or object which can be viewed in terms of its inputs and outputs (or transfer characteristics), without any knowledge of its internal workings. Its implementation is 'opaque' (black)."
Minimum Viable Product,(1) "A product with just enough features to gather validated learning about the product and its continued development." (related: perfect is the enemy of good; de-risking; Customer Development, "Get out of the building.")
Product/Market Fit,(1) "the degree to which a product satisfies a strong market demand." (related: pivot — "structured course correction designed to test a new fundamental hypothesis about the product, strategy, and engine of growth.", "rebuilding year")
Reversible vs Irreversible Decisions,(1) "If the decision was a bad call you can unwind it in a reasonable period of time. A decision such as firing an employee, launching your product, a five-year lease for an expensive new building, etc. These are usually difficult or impossible to reverse." (related: Jeff Bezos on Type 1, Type 2 decisions)
Framing,(1) "With the same information being used as a base, the way the issue is presented can change the reader's perception without having to alter the actual facts." (related: anchoring)
Technology Adoption Lifecycle,(1) "Describes the adoption or acceptance of a new product or innovation, according to the demographic and psychological characteristics of defined adopter groups. The process of adoption over time is typically illustrated as a classical normal distribution or "bell curve". The model indicates that the first group of people to use a new product is called 'innovators', followed by 'early adopters'. Next come the early majority and late majority, and the last group to eventually adopt a product are called 'laggards'."
Sustainable Competitive Advantage,(1) Structural factors that allow a firm to outcompete its rivals for many years.
Core Competancy,(1) "A harmonized combination of multiple resources and skills that distinguish a firm in the marketplace." (related: "you don't have to be an expert on every company, or even many. You only have to be able to evaluate companies within your circle of competence. The size of that circle is not very important; knowing its boundaries, however, is vital.")
Strategy vs Tactics,(1) Former (term) without later (term) is the slowest route to victory. The later (term) without the formal (term) is the noise before defeat.
Sphere of Influence,(1) "A spatial region or concept division over which a state or organization has a level of cultural, economic, military, or political exclusivity, accommodating to the interests of powers outside the borders of the state that controls it."
Deliberate Practice,(1) "How expert one becomes at a skill has more to do with how one practices than with merely performing a skill a large number of times."
Focus on High-leverage Activities,(1) "Leverage should be the central, guiding metric that helps you determine where to focus your time." (related: Eisenhower decision matrix — "what is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important.", "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.", law of triviality — "members of an organisation give disproportionate weight to trivial issues.")
Makers vs Manager's Schedule,(1) "When you're operating on the maker's schedule, meetings are a disaster." (related: Deep Work)