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I once had a really convoluted metaphor for estimation which involved opening boxes that sometimes contained other boxes which sometimes contained other boxes..
by andybak 8y ago
I once had a really convoluted metaphor for estimation which involved opening boxes that sometimes contained other boxes which sometimes contained other boxes... I wonder how that models mathematically.
- joe_the_user 8y agoWell, in the most extreme form, you'd wind-up with something like the poisson distribution [1], where your chance of finishing each week would be the same. This is not entirely implausible but it produces effects even more paradoxical/pathological than log-normal. Here, you could give a correct estimate of the expected time for a project to complete as 50 weeks. You could then reach week fifty and again give a correct estimate of 50 more weeks required. And then you could finish the next week. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisson_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisson_distribution
- andy_ppp 8y agoThe problem with this analogy is that the boxes do not obey the laws of physics and fit inside eachother...
- andybak 8y agoDid I mention that they were magic boxes?