Saturday, November 20, 2010

Interesting

Something interesting from chapter 15 was how to find causes on page 317. I like how the author compared it to how scientists test a theory. To find the cause of the decrease in water the guy in the example “conjectured possible causes” (a leak in the hose, valves, or pond liner, cracked concrete and evaporation) “and by experiment eliminated them until there is only one.” Once the choices are narrowed down, Epstein says to ask yourself “does it make a difference? Is there still an effect? And could there be a common cause?” After testing for the first four causes, the loss was still there. To confirm the problem was due to evaporation, the water flow was reduced. That led to less water loss, confirming that evaporation was the problem. If I had to guess I would have chosen evaporation because he mentioned that he lived in the desert.

1 comment:

  1. I really do agree with your concept of the interesting facts about chain and effect. As I have posted on my blog that before I just think og the cause and effect as chain of action kind of thing. I only think that it one thing, cause another thing to happen. Now that realize there are more to the idea than just what I thought it was, I find it really interesting. One have to find all the possible cause, than eliminate them one by one, until the real cause is found. I think that this sound rather interesting and reasonable.

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