Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Experts know heuristics or “rules of thumb.” Consult these folks before attempting something of importance.

Did you know that a pizza will feed three people? Did you know that you should have half the food cooked and ready to serve at a picnic before the picnic-ers arrive? Did you know that sandstone is not a good base of house construction? Did you know that diesel fuel is the best cleaner to remove tar? Did you know there are 500 words on an 8 1/2″ x 11″ piece of paper?

The above is a bunch of heuristics or rules of thumb. Experts in various subjects know various rules of thumb. The experts learned these things after many experiments that provided experience. Hmm, expert, experiment, and experience seem to have the same base word or something like that. A language expert would be able to explain that to me.

I have attended several picnics that were … disasters. Folks stood in line for an hour waiting for a hot dog. The heuristics on picnics were unknown and unused. Ask experts? Why? This is a picnic. Surely, we can… wrong. Even picnics can be tougher than expected. So can buying pizza, building houses, washing hands, printing essays, writing silly blog posts, and many other things.

Ask experts. Learn some rules of thumb. APPLY those rules of thumb. Do I need to reinvent the wheel? (On that subject, there are many heuristics on making a wheel. If it were simple, everyone could do it and everyone cannot do it.)