3 ms·
I like seeing this probabilistically! That said, I think the operative decision is "should I cut the corner?". If so, you should also factor in the p( ___ | no
by dj-wonk 13y ago
I like seeing this probabilistically!
That said, I think the operative decision is "should I cut the corner?". If so, you should also factor in the p( ___ | not cut corner ) probabilities.
So, you should cut the corner if the benefits exceed the costs. Written out:
p(~P|C) * b(~P) - p(P|C) * c(P)
>
p(~P|~C) * b(~P) - p(P|~C) * c(P)
Symbols: p = probability; b = benefits ($); c = costs ($);
P = problems; ~P = no problems; C = cutting corner; ~C = not cutting corner.
Rearranging to:
p(~P|C) * b(~P) - p(~P|~C) * b(~P)
>
p(P|C) * c(P) - p(P|~C) * c(P)
Then you get a simpler form:
b(~P) * (p(~P|C) - p(~P|~C))
>
c(P) * (p(P|C) - p(P|~C))
An amazing fortune awaits any person who can simply evaluate this inequality in real-world situations.
It is also useful to know when the cost of gathering the information to evaluate the expression is not worth the potential benefit!
- RyanZAG 13y agoDefinitely, thanks for adding in those terms. I kept it simpl(er) and left out the extra terms because I think that those two terms (benefit from cutting the corner vs loss of not cutting the corner) are the major factors when making the decision as they can have big effects on the business itself, while the other terms are just shifting around a bit of extra money/time. Maybe. It would depend on the corner. Everyone just thumb sucks it in the end anyway - I'll just embed this domain name in the distributed binary, nobody will ever steal our domain name! Technically someone at this point should pull up the statistics for stolen domain names to get an estimate for the probability, and work out how much it would cost to set up a system to pull a correct domain name from a backup, and then work out the cost to redistribute all the binaries to end users whose software won't be working for some time. I doubt anybody has ever done that particular calculation.