For instance, before looking at a single example of calculus, Simon might have written down a list of idea areas to explore: “jobs, personal life, the natural world, engineering, other”. He would then take the first broad category, “jobs” and expand it into a longer list, perhaps “agriculture, teaching, customer service, manufacturing, research, IT, other”. With this longer list, he can then focus on each area in turn and either expand it further if it seems especially rife with examples, or come up with an example from the area directly.
I am going to start searching for any opportunity I can find to use this method, because I’m really curious to see how well it works.
I used it to come up with twenty examples of regression to the mean error in the real world. Unfortunately, I’m not sure how long that’s supposed to take, so all I can say for sure is that my examples were nice and diverse, and that the method is neither terrible nor magic. It took me around three hours to come up with the twenty, although had I been someone less subject to akrasia it might have been considerably faster. Also on the benefits side, I never felt really “stuck”, which was nice.
Excellent post!
I am going to start searching for any opportunity I can find to use this method, because I’m really curious to see how well it works.
I used it to come up with twenty examples of regression to the mean error in the real world. Unfortunately, I’m not sure how long that’s supposed to take, so all I can say for sure is that my examples were nice and diverse, and that the method is neither terrible nor magic. It took me around three hours to come up with the twenty, although had I been someone less subject to akrasia it might have been considerably faster. Also on the benefits side, I never felt really “stuck”, which was nice.