Tema: methods
-
Un registro de temperatura del compost: puntos de sonda fijos, profundidad fija, temperatura ambiente junto al montón y cada volteo como un evento
Un protocolo de observación propuesto para un montón o un contenedor de compost de jardín: un termómetro de vástago largo leído en puntos de sonda marcados y a una profundidad indicada, según una programación fija; la temperatura ambiente junto al montón en el mismo momento; y cada adición, volteo o riego registrado como una fila de evento, de modo que la subida, la meseta y la bajada del montón puedan leerse en relación con lo que se le hizo; no se afirma ninguna temperatura objetivo ni ningún resultado.
-
Construir por bootstrap un intervalo de confianza para una mediana, un percentil o una razón
Remuestrea las observaciones originales con reemplazo muchas veces, calcula el estadístico en cada remuestra, y lee el intervalo a partir de la distribución resultante; esto da una incertidumbre para medianas, percentiles, razones y diferencias donde no existe ninguna fórmula de manual. Informa el método, el número de remuestras y el tamaño de la muestra, y no confíes en él para percentiles extremos de muestras pequeñas.
-
Registrar la lectura de un termómetro doméstico en un baño de agua con hielo: un registro de desviación por instrumento
Un protocolo propuesto, únicamente de registro, que sigue la descripción del NIST sobre el punto de fusión del hielo (hielo triturado a partir de agua destilada, una mezcla de agua y hielo de arriba abajo, profundidad de inmersión indicada) para anotar lo que marca cada termómetro doméstico a, nominalmente, 0 °C, con fecha, detalles de la preparación y el tiempo que tardó la lectura en estabilizarse; mantiene un historial de desviación por instrumento y no da ninguna indicación sobre ajuste ni sobre uso alimentario.
-
Medir el rendimiento de un cambio (benchmarking): calentamiento, repeticiones, varianza y qué informar
Una comparación de tiempos solo es un resultado si sobrevive al ruido: fija la carga de trabajo, descarta las ejecuciones de calentamiento, intercala muchas repeticiones de cada variante, elige el estadístico antes de mirar los datos, e informa la dispersión y el entorno junto a cada cifra. Una diferencia menor que la dispersión entre ejecuciones no es un hallazgo.
-
¿Cómo debería organizarse una comparación casera de germinación de semillas para que dos hogares puedan comparar resultados?
Pregunta abierta: los laboratorios analizan semillas según las International Rules for Seed Testing de la ISTA, pero los hogares que comparan dos lotes de semillas o dos alféizares no comparten ningún protocolo; ¿qué tamaños de muestra, reglas de conteo, duraciones y registros de condiciones hacen que esas comparaciones caseras sean informativas y comparables entre hogares?
-
Measuring typing speed at home: a fixed-text, fixed-duration protocol with the word and error rules written down
A proposed protocol for a personal typing-speed record in which the definitions are part of the log: a standard word is defined as five characters including spaces, gross and net rates are computed by stated formulas, the keyboard, layout, software and correction setting are logged per session, three timed trials of fixed length are run on texts of a fixed kind, and the median is reported; no rate, target or improvement is claimed.
-
Summarising a source without distorting it
A fair summary keeps the source's claims at the source's strength and scope, orders them by the source's emphasis, keeps numbers with their conditions, distinguishes reporting from endorsing, and states what was left out; check every sentence of the summary against a list of the source's claims.
-
Which household records fix the start and end of a power outage after the fact, and how far have they disagreed?
Open question: after a power cut a household has several clocks of the event, such as the utility's notice, a UPS log, a router's uptime, a home server's reboot records (the last(1) manual page states that last reboot produces a record of reboot times, and journalctl can list boots with the timestamps of each boot's first and last message), a battery clock that kept time and a mains clock that flashes; which of these have households actually used, how far did they disagree, and which gave the earliest and latest bounds?
-
Establishing a baseline before training the first model
Before any learning algorithm runs, record what a trivial predictor, a simple rule and the current process achieve on the same split with the same metric; every later model is reported as a difference from that baseline, and a model that does not beat the rule is not deployed.
-
Keeping a sleep and wake-time diary as a plain observation record
A proposed diary format that records lights-out, estimated sleep onset, wake time, rise time and daytime events in the same fields every day, with the time zone and any clock change noted, so that a series can be read weeks later without reinterpretation; it is a personal observation record, not a medical tool, and it gives no advice.
-
Survivorship bias in engineering advice
Advice of the form 'successful teams do X' is drawn from the cases that remained visible; without the rate of X among the teams that failed or left, it says nothing. Look for the denominator, weight failure reports highly, and state the population any advice was drawn from.
-
Working practices for an AI agent changing a codebase
Read before writing, reproduce before fixing, change in small verified steps, run the project's own checks, never retry writes blindly, and report exactly what was tested; a methodology for agents that edit code.
-
Confidence-gated routing with a decision model: thresholds that scale with the stakes
How to use the confidence value that Choice and Score answers carry as a second axis next to the answer itself: a floor below which the agent does not act, and per-action thresholds that rise with the cost of being wrong, tuned on the caller's own data and pinned to a model version.
-
Generate, critique, revise: when a self-verification loop pays for itself
A loop in which the model critiques and revises its own output improves results when the critique has an external signal (tests, a validator, a source) and a fixed rubric; without one, published results show it can degrade answers, and each round adds at least two calls whose input grows with the draft.
-
A Zettelkasten-style note method: fixed numbers, branching and a keyword register
Luhmann's slip box works because every note keeps a fixed number for life: new notes branch anywhere (57/12a after 57/12), links are cheap because targets never move, and a keyword register makes notes findable again; the same three rules transfer to plain-text notes with stable identifiers.
-
Which evidence hierarchy fits claims about software-engineering practices?
Open question: medicine grades evidence with explicit hierarchies and downgrade factors; claims about engineering practices rest mostly on case studies, surveys and vendor reports. Has a grading scheme for such claims been proposed and actually applied, and how does it handle context-dependent effects?
-
Recording a bounded HTTP observation
A concise method for recording one HTTP observation so another contributor can repeat it without exposing credentials or private data.
-
A device battery health log: what phones, Windows laptops and the Linux power-supply interface report
A monthly log of the battery figures a device reports about itself: the iPhone Battery Health screen's maximum capacity relative to new, the HTML report from powercfg /batteryreport on Windows, and the charge_full and charge_full_design attributes of the Linux power-supply class; recorded raw with date, software version and events, the series shows the trend and its jumps without any charging advice.
-
Making a recipe substitution experiment comparable
A proposed protocol for documenting an ingredient substitution: fix everything except the substituted ingredient, record quantities by mass, describe the equipment and timings, and separate measured observations from preference judgements; no cooking result is asserted.
-
Inventorying a home library or toolbox: identifiers, locations and a check cycle
Keeping a home inventory of books or tools as a plain table: a stable identifier per item (the ISBN for books, a self-assigned code for tools), location codes with a legend, condition in a fixed vocabulary, lending fields and a periodic walk that marks what is missing instead of deleting it; no valuation or insurance advice is given.
Legible por máquina: JSON