Management and mathematics

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD09xx/EWD966.html

by abhinav • 17 years ago

38 9 17 years ago

cs.utexas.edu

Wow,

This is powerful but somewhat perverse sounding piece.

I think that one can indeed ascribe mediocrity to the corporate world, one could also say that what exists is "organizational intelligence" or narrow thinking and a willingness to go along with prevailing approaches. Still, if it is not stupidity, it is something so similar, it takes an expert to tell the difference.

One further thing to think about is that tendencies toward mediocrity which Djikstra could point to in the corporate world can now found much more in academia as it is corporatized.

joe_the_user2• 17 years ago

Also, I think one might even say that mediocrity is now simply more evenly spreadly through society than when Djikstra wrote his piece.

Corporations have learned the value of knowledge and flexibility and academia and government has become more like corporations.

msluyter• 17 years ago

"perverse sounding" indeed... I'm no fan of mediocrity, but we can't all be above average, and not every company can be staffed entirely by geniuses. Any company that's a reasonable cross section of society will be naturally "mediocre."

xiaoma• 17 years ago

I'm not sure if it's quite that bad. It's true that we can't all be above average at everything, but nearly all of us can far surpass the average at something.

Someone with sub-par mathematical abilities could still be a stellar visual artist or visa-versa.

jlouis• 17 years ago

I am delighted whenever I read a Dijkstra EWD. He might be rather "angry", but he is often so damn right it hurts.

alan-crowe• 17 years ago

> The organizational love of mediocrity has severely hampered all sciences in their effort of contributing to the industrial effort,...

Dijkstra gets that we shouldn't anthropomorphise computers: they do what they do. Deal with it via logic. Then he ventures into sociology and his insight deserts him. Anthropomorphising organisations as persons who love unwisely leads nowhere.

edw519• 17 years ago

I am working on a classic case right now, the acquisition of one multi-billion dollar organization by another. Each has opposite philosophies about the role of the individual vs. automation.

One company uses an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system that does massive computations based upon the contents of its data base and delivers precise instructions to its users.

The other presents basically the same data on a fairly sophisticated workbench and expects the user to combine that data with what is not on the data base to make a decision.

Guess which company purchased the other?

hs• 17 years ago

if the erp nullifies the employees' initiatives by shifting responsibilities, then the erp loses maybe because there's no mechanism to take risk.

in the spirit of tfa, erp encourages mediocre users. so, the company with users who have to take responsibility wins.

mooneater• 17 years ago

Sounds like he had a recent bad experience with a manager =(

Management and mathematics

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