Tech — Work — Ramblings

by Mike Kalvas

202304031254 Small careful samples are better than large poor ones

Small samples carefully taken are better than large samples poorly done.1

It's important when taking measurements or testing something that the samples we gather are taken carefully. If we gather a lot of data but it's inaccurate, then we're going to make a mistake in our conclusions or actions. Instead we should focus on accuracy first and only after that try to increase our sample size as long as it doesn't decrease quality.

A topic that comes to mind when writing this is logging and testing in 202109061338 Software Engineering. I'd rather have a few excellent log outputs or tests run that I can count on to get precise, high quality information from than a huge number of them that produce mostly noise.

  1. Hamming, R. W. (2020). The art of doing science and engineering: Learning to learn. Stripe Press. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53349431-the-art-of-doing-science-and-engineering ↩