Oct

30

Asking where is a Variant Perception (in the Michael Steinhardt sense) is one way to focus the (young) spec and structure his /her thoughts a bit. It is being discussed on the list before and takes some time to get into.

What young specs often face is a myriad of ideas and opinions, but they never develop a deeper insight and tacit knowledge for themselves.

P.S. am looking into ultra-long dated European bonds (French 30yr) as possible Variant Perception, but I might be wrong and haven't finished it , and don't copy me.

William Huggins writes:

as a variant of this, I had students in my stats class start with a basic HBS stats case and then had them dissect the author's approach to reach the same point as you have "is this even a smart question to ask?" they were presented with multiple hypothesis tests and asked to comment on the alignment of the test with the primary research question. then i had thm "steelman" the best alternative proposal they could, and ultimately recommend a better procedure for getting closer to the truth (the case was, like investing, whether skill or luck is the dominant factor in fantasy cricket lol - both matter but its much harder to tease out which is "dominant" than to simply demonstrate that skill matters). this type of "explore the alternates" approach leads to better analysts than those simply seeking out (supposedly) confirming evidence.

this is one of the most useful resources i give to stats students who need to learn how decisions actually get made "outside the lab" with wickedly imperfect information and time constraints on making consequential decisions:

A Tradecraft Primer: Structured Analytic Techniques for Improving Intelligence Analysis


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