Second Guessing Yourself: Improve Your Estimates by Guessing Twice and Averaging
Via BoingBoing, spotted a Scientific American article on how you can become more accurate in your estimates. Short answer: assume you were wrong the first time, guess again, and average the two. The results are, surprisingly, more accurate.
… participants were given detailed directions for making their follow-up guess: “First, assume that your first estimate is off the mark. Second, think about a few reasons why that could be. Which assumptions and considerations could have been wrong? Third, what do these new considerations imply?… Fourth, based on this new perspective, make a second, alternative estimate.”
When the participants used the more involved method, the average was significantly more accurate than the first estimate. The “crowd within” achieved about half the accuracy gains that would have been achieved by averaging with a second person.
I oftentimes get to estimate projects for my job, involving both total hours and timelines. Lots of unknowns are part of the equation, and I’m going to try to second guess myself a little more. In the good way.
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As a slight tangent, I think the font size on Scientific American’s page makes things pretty tough to read. Maybe chalk it up to me having terrible vision, or me just getting old.
Still, the issue is readability. Conveniently, there’s a nice little script called just that: Readability. I have it saved as a little bookmark, and whenever I encounter a page that’s a little too cluttered or a font that’s a little too small… it’s a godsend. Seriously – give it a whirl. You’ll wonder how you ever read anything online without it.
2n+1! 2n+1! My friend Alexa told me that someone once gave her that formula. First, figure out how long you think it will take to complete your project. Then double it and add one unit. For example, if you think it will take 20 minutes to update your blog, multiply 20 x 2 and add 1 minute. So, in real life, it will take you 41 minutes. If your estimate is 5 days, in real life, it will take you 11 days. Etc.This formula turns out to be way more accurate more often than you’d think.
juliet (June 8, 2009 at 12:36 am)