The Art of Smart Guessing
Several years ago interviewing candidates for a job I grew tired of asking What experience do you have So I decided on a one-question quiz to find out how resourceful a thinker the new hire might be. Here it is:
几年前我厌倦问面试应聘者“你有什么经验”所以我决定用一个问题的测验来了解新员工有多么的足智多谋。那就是 You are on a yacht sailing the Pacific Ocean. Your navigator announces you are over the deepest point the Mariana Trench. Just then a clumsy guest accidentally drops a 12-pound cannonball over the side. How long will it take for the cannonball to reach the bottom of the ocean
你在一艘航行于太平洋的游艇上。你的导航仪显示你是在最深的地方——马里亚纳海沟之上。就在那时一个笨拙的客人不小心将一枚12磅重的炮弹扔了下去。炮弹落到海底需要多长时间
Before reading on please try to solve this yourself--paying special attention to how you might
solve it.
在继续阅读之前请设法自己解决这个问题——特别注意你如何解决它。
Did you make a completely wild guess because there wasnt enough information Did you get too bogged down in the details trying to come up with the exactly right answer Or did you zero in on the two most important problems--how deep is the Mariana Trench and how fast might a cannonball fall through the water-- then hazard a guesstimate
你是否因为“没有足够的信息”而做了一个完全的猜测你是否过于陷入细节试图出“正确”答案还是你瞄准的两个最重要的问题——马里亚纳海沟有多深和炮弹在水中以多块的速度落下——然后大胆猜测 Most of my candidates simply made a wild guess thinking that if they couldnt be 100-percent right there was no use trying to be 95-percent right. Rarely was someone willing to risk an approximation.
我的大多数应聘者只是胡乱猜测想他们认为自己不可能100正确即使95正确也是没有用的。
很少有人愿意大胆猜测。
What does this have to do with business or creativity A great deal. In the real world we frequently need to make decisions when the full information does not exist. From what foods we eat to how to raise our kids creative people must think for themselves. There may not be the time or the money to make sure of all your decisions. Your best guess will often be the best you can do.
这与商业或创造力有什么关系呢事实上有很多关系。在现实世界中我们经常需要在没有完整信息的情况下做出决定。从我们吃什么食物到如何培养自己的孩子有创造力的人必须独立思考。你可能没有时间或金钱来确保你所有的决定。最好的猜测常常会成为你最应该做的事情。
Suppose for example youve been asked to write a marketing plan for a new telephone device that will send your name company address and telephone number to a visual display or printer on another persons phone. In addition to conventional outlets like mass merchandisers and electronics stores youd like to know the number of phone stores in the
United States. Unfortunately this figure is not available either from market-research houses or from the . government. What do you do
打个比方假定你要为一个新的电话设备写一个营销计划这个设备会将您的大名、公司、地址、电话号码发送到别人的手机的显示器或打印机上。除了常规网点像大商场和电子卖场你还要了解美国“手机店”的数量。不幸的是这个数字无论是从市场研究机构或从美国政府 都不可能得到。你会怎么做
One solution would be to go to your local library pull out a few phone directories from around the country turn to the Yellow Pages and start counting. You could then guesstimate how many stores there were nationwide based on the number of stores per 100000 people in each of the cities you counted. This by the way is exactly what a marketing consultant I know did for a large telecommunications client.
一个解决办法是去您当地的图书馆拉出来自全国各地的几个电话目录打开黄页然后开始数。接着你就可以
根据你所数的每个城市里每十万人会有多少家店来猜测全国有多少家店。 顺便说一下这是我知道的一个营销顾问为一个大型电信客户所做的市场调查的确切做法。
The question about phone stores was an example of what scientists call a Fermi problem named after Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi who used problems such as this to teach his students how to think for themselves. A Fermi problem does not contain all the information you need to solve it precisely.
手机店的问题是科学家所谓的费米问题的一个例子费米问题是由诺贝尔奖得主物理学家恩里科·费米所命名他曾用这类问题来教他的学生独立思考。费米问题不包含所有你需要的信息但你必须准确地解决它。 Fermi is said to have once asked his university students how many piano tuners there were in Chicago. To answer the question he recommended breaking it down into smaller more manageable questions and then having the courage to make some guesses and assumptions. How many people live in Chicago Three million would be a reasonable estimate. How many people per family Assume an average of four. How many families own pianos Say one out of three. Then there are about 250000 pianos in Chicago.
How often would each be tuned Maybe once every five years. That makes 50000 tunings a year. How many pianos can one tuner tune in a day Four And how many in a year Assuming 250 working days one tuner can handle 1000 pianos a year.
据说费米曾经问他的大学生芝加哥有多少个钢琴调音师。为了回答这个问题他建议吧问题打破分解成更小、更易于处理的问题然后勇敢地去做一些猜测和假设。芝加哥有多少人口三百 万将是一个合理的估计。每个家庭有多少人假设平均有四口人。有多少家庭拥有钢琴呢三分之一吧。那么芝加哥大约就有25万架钢琴。每台钢琴多久需要调音一次也许是每隔五年。那每年就有五万次调音。一个调音师一天可以为几台钢琴调音四台一年内多少台假设一年有250个工作日一个调音师一年就可以为1000台钢琴调音。
So theres work for approximately 50 piano tuners in Chicago-- which as it turns out is reasonably close to the actual number in the Yellow Pages.
因此芝加哥大约有50位钢琴调音师——事实证明这个结果理所应当地接近黄页上的实际数据。
Why was guesswork so accurate The law of averages is partly responsible. At any point your assumptions may be too high or too low. But because of the law of averages your mistakes will frequently balance out.
为什么猜测可以如此的精确有一部分原因是因为平均数定律。在任何时候你的假设可能会过高或过低。但由于平均数定律你的失误往往会得到平衡。
Heres another puzzle. You probably already know that black absorbs the most heat while white reflects the most. But what about other colors in between How could you find the answer Hint: its wintertime but not too cold. 还有一个疑问。你可能已经知道黑吸收最多的热量而白反射了大多数热量。但在黑白之间的其他颜呢你如何能到答案提示:冬天但不太冷的时候。
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