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Color Of The Bike Shed
The law of triviality is C. Northcote Parkinson's 1957 argument that people within an organization commonly give disproportionate weight to trivial issues. Parkinson provides the example of a fictional committee whose job was to approve the plans for a nuclear power plant spending the majority of its time on discussions about relatively minor but easy-to-grasp issues, such as what materials to use for the staff bicycle shed, while neglecting the proposed design of the plant itself, which is far more important and a far more difficult and complex task. The law has been applied to software development and other activities. The terms bicycle-shed effect, bike-shed effect, and bike-shedding were coined based on Parkinson's example; it was popularized in the Berkeley Software Distribution community by the Danish software developer Poul-Henning Kamp in 1999 and, due to that, has since become popular within the field of software development generally. Argument The concept was first ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuclear Power Plant
A nuclear power plant (NPP), also known as a nuclear power station (NPS), nuclear generating station (NGS) or atomic power station (APS) is a thermal power station in which the heat source is a nuclear reactor. As is typical of thermal power stations, heat is used to generate steam that drives a steam turbine connected to a electric generator, generator that produces electricity. , the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that there were 410 nuclear power reactors in operation in 32 countries around the world, and 57 nuclear power reactors under construction. Most nuclear power plants use thermal reactors with enriched uranium in a Nuclear fuel cycle#Once-through nuclear fuel cycle, once-through fuel cycle. Fuel is removed when the percentage of neutron poison, neutron absorbing atoms becomes so large that a nuclear chain reaction, chain reaction can no longer be sustained, typically three years. It is then cooled for several years in on-site spent fuel pools be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fredkin's Paradox
Fredkin's paradox reads "The more equally attractive two alternatives seem, the harder it can be to choose between them—no matter that, to the same degree, the choice can only matter less." Thus, a decision-making agent might spend the most time on the least important decisions. It was proposed by American physicist Edward Fredkin. The paradox arises from the negative correlation between the ''difference'' between two options and the ''difficulty'' of deciding between them. Developed further, the paradox constitutes a major challenge to the possibility of pure instrumental rationality. An intuitive response to Fredkin's paradox is to calibrate decision-making time with the importance of the decision: to calculate the cost of optimizing into the optimization, a version of the value of information. However, this response is self-referential and spawns a new, recursive paradox: the decision-maker must now optimize the optimization of the optimization, and so on. See also * Burida ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Time Management
Time management is the process of planning and exercising conscious control of time spent on specific activities—especially to increase effectiveness, efficiency and productivity. Time management involves demands relating to work, social life, family, hobbies, personal interests and commitments. Using time effectively gives people more choices in managing activities. Time management may be aided by a range of skills, tools and techniques, especially when accomplishing specific tasks, projects and goals complying with a due date. Initially, the term time management encompassed only business and work activities, but eventually the term comprised personal activities as well. A time management system is a designed combination of processes, tools, techniques and methods. Time management is usually a necessity in managing projects, as it determines the project completion time and scope. Cultural views Differences in the way a culture views time can affect the way their tim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Student Syndrome
''Student syndrome'' refers to planned procrastination, when a student will substantially apply themselves to an assignment or task at the last moment before its deadline. For a person experiencing student syndrome, they only make significant progress when there is a sense of urgency that causes the person to put the proper amount of effort into their task. This eliminates any potential safety margins and puts the person under stress and pressure. An estimated 80 to 95 percent of college students engage in some form of procrastination. The term is used to describe this form of procrastination in general, and does not only apply to students. It has been observed to affect work flow and productivity in a traditional class setting, the manufacturing industry, and professional fields, such as software engineering and engineering management. The term was coined by Eliyahu M. Goldratt in his novel ''Critical Chain''. Causes & effects of student syndrome Student syndrome can be cau ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scope Neglect
Scope neglect or scope insensitivity is a cognitive bias that occurs when the valuation of a problem is not valued with a multiplicative relationship to its size. Scope neglect is a specific form of extension neglect. Research In one study, respondents were asked how much they were willing to pay to prevent migrating birds from drowning in uncovered oil ponds by covering the oil ponds with protective nets. Subjects were told that either 2,000, or 20,000, or 200,000 migrating birds were affected annually, for which subjects reported they were willing to pay $80, $78 and $88 respectively. Other studies of willingness-to-pay to prevent harm have found a logarithmic relationship or no relationship to scope size. The psychologist Daniel Kahneman explains scope neglect in terms of judgment by prototype, a refinement of the representativeness heuristic. "The story ..probably evokes for many readers a mental representation of a prototypical incident, perhaps an image of an exhausted b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sayre's Law
Sayre's law states, in a formulation quoted by Charles Philip Issawi: "In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake." By way of corollary, it adds: "That is why academic politics are so bitter." Sayre's law is named after Wallace Stanley Sayre (1905–1972), U.S. political scientist and professor at Columbia University. History On 20 December 1973, the ''Wall Street Journal'' quoted Sayre as: "Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low." Political scientist Herbert Kaufman, a colleague and coauthor of Sayre, has attested to Fred R. Shapiro, editor of ''The Yale Book of Quotations'', that Sayre usually stated his claim as "The politics of the university are so intense because the stakes are so low", and that Sayre originated the quip by the early 1950s. Many other claimants attach to the thought behind Sayre's law. According to Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson frequentl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Narcissism Of Small Differences
In psychoanalysis, the narcissism of small differences () is the idea that the more a relationship or community shares commonalities, the more likely the people in it are to engage in interpersonal feuds and mutual ridicule because of hypersensitivity to minor differences perceived in each other. The term was coined by Sigmund Freud in 1917, based on the earlier work of English anthropologist Ernest Crawley. Crawley theorized that each individual is separated from others by a taboo of personal isolation, which is effectively a narcissism of minor differences. Usage The term appeared in Freud's '' Civilization and Its Discontents'' (1929–30) in relation to the application of the inborn aggression in man to ethnic (and other) conflicts, a process still considered by Freud, at that point, as a convenient and relatively harmless satisfaction of the inclination to aggression. For Lacanians, the concept clearly related to the sphere of the Imaginary: the narcissism of small differe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Procrastination
Procrastination is the act of unnecessarily delaying or postponing something despite knowing that there could be negative consequences for doing so. It is a common human experience involving delays in everyday chores or even putting off tasks such as attending an appointment, submitting a job report or academic assignment, or broaching a stressful issue with a partner. It is often perceived as a negative trait due to its hindering effect on one's productivity, associated with depression, low self-esteem, guilt, and feelings of inadequacy. However, it can also be considered a wise response to certain demands that could present risky or negative outcomes or require waiting for new information to arrive. From a cultural and social perspective, students from both Western and Non-Western cultures are found to exhibit academic procrastination, but for different reasons. Students from Western cultures tend to procrastinate in order to avoid doing worse than they have done before or fail ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Omission Bias
Omission bias is the phenomenon in which people prefer omission (inaction) over commission (action), and tend to judge harm as a result of commission more negatively than harm as a result of omission. It can occur due to a number of processes, including psychological inertia, the perception of transaction costs, and the perception that commissions are more causal than omissions. In social political terms the Universal Declaration of Human Rights establishes how basic human rights are to be assessed in article 2, as "without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status." criteria that are often subject to one or another form of omission bias. It is controversial as to whether omission bias is a cognitive bias or is often rational. The bias is often showcased through the trolley problem and has also been described as an explanation for the endowment effect and status qu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Eponymous Laws
This list of eponymous laws provides links to articles on laws, principles, adages, and other succinct observations or predictions named after a person. In some cases the person named has coined the law – such as Parkinson's law. In others, the work or publications of the individual have led to the law being so named – as is the case with Moore's law. There are also laws ascribed to individuals by others, such as Murphy's law; or given eponymous names despite the absence of the named person. Named laws range from significant scientific laws such as Newton's laws of motion, to humorous examples such as Murphy's law. A–B * Acton's dictum: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men .. * Aitken's law describes how vowel length in Scots and Scottish English is conditioned by environment. Named for Professor A. J. Aitken, who formulated it. * Alder's razor: See Newton's flaming laser sword below. * Allen's rule ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
