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Open Source Pioneer Michael Tiemann On the Myth of the Average

Posted by timothy on from the 2.3-of-3.4-children-agree dept.

StewBeans writes: In a recent article, Michael Tiemann, one of the world's first open source entrepreneurs and VP of Open Source Affairs at Red Hat, highlights an example from the 1950s US Air Force where the "myth of the average resulted in a generation of planes that almost no pilots could reliably fly, and which killed as many as 17 pilots in a single day." He uses this example to argue that IT leaders who think that playing it safe means being as average as possible in order to avoid risks (i.e. "Buy what others are buying. Deploy what others are deploying. Manage what others are managing.") may be making IT procurement and strategy decisions based on flawed data. Instead, Tiemann says that IT leaders should understand elements of differentiation that are most valuable, and then adopt the standards that exploit them. "Don't aim for average: it may not exist. Aim for optimal, and use the power of open source to achieve what uniquely benefits your organization."

6 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. Please Explain by BradleyUffner · · Score: 4, Insightful

    " an example from the 1950s US Air Force where the "myth of the average resulted in a generation of planes that almost no pilots could reliably fly, and which killed as many as 17 pilots in a single day"

    Did I miss the part of the story that explains HOW it managed to kill 17 pilots in one day?

    1. Re:Please Explain by Immerman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      One more reason at least basic probability should be taught as a high-priority subject, starting in high school at the latest. Probability is after all something that we all deal with almost constantly in informing our decisions, and by nature we're actually pretty lousy at assessing it.

      If there's a 30% chance that someone will fall within the designated "average" range on any given dimension, and assuming the dimensions are roughly independent, there's only a roughly 0.30^10 = 0.0006% chance that someone will fall into that range for all dimensions. That's only one individual in 169,350. Nobody with the most basic grasp of probability would expect many people to qualify.

      And these are scientists that expected otherwise? They should be ashamed of themselves.

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    2. Re:Please Explain by KiloByte · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And here you made a basic mistake: the assumption of dimensions being independent is obviously false. Someone tall usually has long hands, and so on. Most dimensions have a rather high correlation.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    3. Re:Please Explain by OzPeter · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But even Daniels was stunned when he tabulated the actual number.

      Zero."

      Which has actually jack squat explanation as to why the pilots died.

      For all the details we are given the dead pilots could have been flying bespoke aircraft with hand crafted cockpits that matched there personal ergonomics, but were flying against enemies with aircraft that were 10 times superior in flight ability, but were mass produced.

      Without any further details, the idea that ergonomics killed those pilots is pure assumption.

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  2. Skip this, read the article it references. Really by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The article misquotes an excerpt from a book here:
    http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-force-discovered-the-flaw-of-averages.html

    This explains more of the story: the measurements were originally taken in 1926, but it wasn't until the 1950's that increased speeds for fighters made the design flaws apparent. The 17 deaths is an agile enterprise adaptation of 17 non-fatal crashes. Anyhow, it seems intuitive that body measurements would be correlated, so I'd say the big error was not checking that assumption. Kind of amazing bad science lasted that long.

  3. Why pick popular by XXongo · · Score: 3, Insightful
    From bitter experience, I'll put in a word for the value of picking software that multiple other people use rather than picking what optimally fits your needs.

    Software that is popular with the most users is also the software that is least likely to be orphaned, leaving you to either keep obsolete machines running or else having to migrate some obscure data format into some different form.

    Also, the most popular software is more likely to have the most annoying features "corrected" because so many users complain. (not to mention it has the most people posting work-arounds on the web for the things that don't work.)