1、The Art of Smart GuessingSeveral 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
2、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
3、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 try
4、ing 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找出“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M
5、ost 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 creat
6、ivity 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 w
7、ill 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 n
8、umber 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 t
9、he U.S. 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
10、 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
11、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 t
12、hemselves. 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 th
13、e 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 ow
14、n 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
15、 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-
16、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 mist
17、akes 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
18、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色反射了大多数热量。但在黑白之间的其他颜色呢你如何能找到答案提示:冬天但不太冷的时候。Ben Franklins solution was elegant. He simply laid broadcloth samples of various colors on the snow on a sunny morning. In a few hours he reported the black being warmed most by the sun was sunk so low as to be belo
19、w the stroke of the suns rays the dark blue almost as low the lighter blue not quite so much as the dark the other colors less as they were lighter and the quite white remained on the surface of the snow not having entered it at all.本富兰克林的办法非常优雅。一个阳光明媚的早晨他只是在雪地上铺设了各种不同颜色的阔幅布样品。他说“几小时的日晒后在太阳辐射的照射下黑色的
20、布将变得最温暖黑布陷进雪地里如此之低以至于阳光都照射不到了深蓝色的几乎与黑色一样低低浅蓝色就不像深蓝陷得那么深了其他颜色的陷得更浅白色的仍然留在雪地的表面根本没有陷入进去。”One of my favorite guesstimators is Weston Conn. inventor Stan Mason who developed microwave cookware specially designed to position food in the best spot for cooking.我最喜欢的一个“猜想家”是 Weston Conn.的发明家斯坦梅森他改进了微波炊具特殊设计
21、了最佳烹调的食物放置位置。To do this Mason needed to know where the microwaves hot spots” were - the place where the rays hit the food with the highest intensity. To find out he put shelves of unpopped popcorn kernels in the microwave and watched to see which kernels popped first. He discovered a pattern in the
22、ovens hottest rays: they werent in the corners or at the center but in the shape of a mushroom cloud.要做到这一点梅森需要知道微波热点”在哪 那儿的食物受到最高强度强度的微波照射。为了找出真相他把几层架子的未爆裂的爆米花谷粒放入微波炉中观察看哪个谷粒首先爆裂。突然他发现了微波炉最热射线的一个模式最热门的射线既不是在角落里也不在中心而是在蘑菇云的形状里。Then he designed cooking dishes to fit the pattern. He had come up with a
23、 resourceful way to approximate the answer rather than using scientifically sophisticated testing equipment.然后他设计烹饪菜肴来适应这个模式。他已经想出一个创意十足的方法来接近答案而不是利用科学精密的检测设备。Fermi would have approved.如果费米知道的话他也会为之鼓掌的。By the way the Mariana Trench is about six nautical miles deep and a cannonball drops at a rate of
24、 ten feet per second. So it took the cannonball about an hour to reach the bottom of the trench.话说马里亚纳海沟深约六海里炮弹下降速率为 10英尺/秒。因此炮弹大约要花一个小时的时间到达海沟底部。Could this be guessed If you know that Earths highest point Mount Everest is 29000 feet you might reasonably conclude that its lowest point would be close
25、 to the same distance. Then you might imagine that a heavy object would take one second to fall through the water of a 10-foot-deep swimming pool. These estimates would bring you close enough to the correct answer.这都否被猜到如果你知道地球最高峰的珠穆朗玛峰海拔 29000英尺你可能会得出合理的结论:最低点也是同样的距离。然后你可以想象一个重物掉进一个10英尺深的游泳池只需要 1秒钟到底。这些估算足够让你去接近正确答案。
