Expressing Estimate Uncertainty
In the typical software organization it's not at all unusual for a yearlong software project to be scheduled for completion precise to a single day at the very beginning of the project. For instance, “this project will finish on 21 Jan 20xx.” Think about the precision of this estimate as a percentage of the total project schedule. If finishing on 20 Jan would be considered “early” and finishing on 22 Jan would be considered “late,” the “on-time” window is the 24 hours of 21 Jan 20xx. Given a yearlong project, however, even allowing time off for weekends and holidays (there are typically 260 workdays in a work year) that's a precision of less than half of one percent.
In the 500-mile drive example, an average speed ...
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