Sketchplanations - A weekly explanation in a sketch

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Explaining the world one sketch at a time

Sneaky averages

There's an old story about the statistician who drowned after seeing that the average depth was 3ft. Averages, or in this case the mean, necessarily hide some data, but very often they also hide what's really going on. Say you run a delivery service and have an average delivery time of one day; it could be that most deliveries are actually a few hours, while just a few have people waiting for a week. A figure of average incomes might mask the fact that most people have low salaries, while a few are millionaires. My Dad, who did a lot of flying for work to conferences, to visit collaborators, used to joke about calculating your average height above sea level. If you spend most of your hours at 10 ft above sea level and just enough at 20,000 ft, then your average height has you floating tens or a few hundred feet in the air. This tells you very little about where the person is likely to be right now. Just looking at the average for each of these, you can't tell much. Sometimes a different measure of central tendency, like the median, can provide a clearer picture. Sheldon Zedeck, a UC Berkeley psychology professor who taught me about the design of experiments, gave wise advice: "Spend time with your data." Sometimes it's the only way to know what's happening for sure.…There's an old story about the statistician who drowned after seeing that the average depth was 3ft. Averages, or in this case the mean, necessarily hide some data, but very often they also hide what's really going on. Say you run a delivery service and have an average delivery time of one day; it could be that most deliveries are actually a few hours, while just a few have people waiting for a week. A figure of average incomes might mask the fact that most people have low salaries, while a few are millionaires. My Dad, who did a lot of flying for work to conferences, to visit collaborators, used to joke about calculating your average height above sea level. If you spend most of your hours at 10 ft above sea level and just enough at 20,000 ft, then your average height has you floating tens or a few hundred feet in the air. This tells you very little about where the person is likely to be right now. Just looking at the average for each of these, you can't tell much. Sometimes a different measure of central tendency, like the median, can provide a clearer picture. Sheldon Zedeck, a UC Berkeley psychology professor who taught me about the design of experiments, gave wise advice: "Spend time with your data." Sometimes it's the only way to know what's happening for sure.

8 May 2022

Chaos monkey

The chaos monkey is a smart piece of software and a brilliant idea from engineers at Netflix. The chaos monkey deliberately switches off servers in live environments at random. It takes the pain of disappearing servers and brings that pain forward. By deliberately sabotaging their own systems it created strong alignment for the team to design-in redundancy and automation for the necessary resiliency and reliability in the face of random failures. Training for this randomness helps make stronger, more resilient and fault-tolerant systems and software and keeps your movie streaming so you can keep chilling without interruptions. The chaos monkey is a great metaphor and trigger to actively work on what life could throw at your system before it happens. More monkey inspiration for writing and for bananas.…The chaos monkey is a smart piece of software and a brilliant idea from engineers at Netflix. The chaos monkey deliberately switches off servers in live environments at random. It takes the pain of disappearing servers and brings that pain forward. By deliberately sabotaging their own systems it created strong alignment for the team to design-in redundancy and automation for the necessary resiliency and reliability in the face of random failures. Training for this randomness helps make stronger, more resilient and fault-tolerant systems and software and keeps your movie streaming so you can keep chilling without interruptions. The chaos monkey is a great metaphor and trigger to actively work on what life could throw at your system before it happens. More monkey inspiration for writing and for bananas.

1 May 2022

Challenge questions

Two types of questions you might face when presenting are Clarification questions and Challenge questions. Clarification questions are usually pretty simple — someone is curious or didn't understand an aspect of what you said. You just need to answer as best you can and check with them that you answered their question. Challenge questions are when someone disagrees or has concerns about what you've presented. Not all of us, however, are likely to say so clearly, and so challenge questions are often disguised as clarification questions. A "How it will work for new visitors?" might actually come from the thought: "I don't think this will work for new visitors." Or a "When will it be ready?" may stem from "I don't think this will be done on time." You may pick it up in the tone of how it's asked. Challenge questions usually benefit from a different approach. Responding effectively to a Challenge question may require exploring the concern or issue behind the question. I've seen many short, factual responses to Challenge questions where the person asking is not at all reassured by the response. Reminding myself that a question may be a Challenge, not a Clarification question, helps me make sure everyone is brought along with me during a meeting, presentation, or plain old conversation. This along with many other useful frameworks is from Trenton Moss' excellent Human Powered.…Two types of questions you might face when presenting are Clarification questions and Challenge questions. Clarification questions are usually pretty simple — someone is curious or didn't understand an aspect of what you said. You just need to answer as best you can and check with them that you answered their question. Challenge questions are when someone disagrees or has concerns about what you've presented. Not all of us, however, are likely to say so clearly, and so challenge questions are often disguised as clarification questions. A "How it will work for new visitors?" might actually come from the thought: "I don't think this will work for new visitors." Or a "When will it be ready?" may stem from "I don't think this will be done on time." You may pick it up in the tone of how it's asked. Challenge questions usually benefit from a different approach. Responding effectively to a Challenge question may require exploring the concern or issue behind the question. I've seen many short, factual responses to Challenge questions where the person asking is not at all reassured by the response. Reminding myself that a question may be a Challenge, not a Clarification question, helps me make sure everyone is brought along with me during a meeting, presentation, or plain old conversation. This along with many other useful frameworks is from Trenton Moss' excellent Human Powered.

24 Apr 2022

Reasons stop mattering

I've read that Steve Jobs used to tell a story to new VPs about a janitor and a CEO. If you were the janitor and were asked to clean an office, it's reasonable to have not cleaned it if you found the door was locked and you didn't have the key. However, somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, the reasons or excuses for why something happened or couldn't be done stop mattering. It probably isn't your fault that the system went down, or that you didn't have access to the office, but as a leader it's your responsibility to make things happen and mistakes are now your responsibility too. The sketch is not meant to downplay the role or attitude of janitors in any way or say that this is the difference between janitors and CEOs. Here's more on how Steve explains it. The story is a nice example of the accountability ladder. I learned this from the excellent Julie Zhou.…I've read that Steve Jobs used to tell a story to new VPs about a janitor and a CEO. If you were the janitor and were asked to clean an office, it's reasonable to have not cleaned it if you found the door was locked and you didn't have the key. However, somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, the reasons or excuses for why something happened or couldn't be done stop mattering. It probably isn't your fault that the system went down, or that you didn't have access to the office, but as a leader it's your responsibility to make things happen and mistakes are now your responsibility too. The sketch is not meant to downplay the role or attitude of janitors in any way or say that this is the difference between janitors and CEOs. Here's more on how Steve explains it. The story is a nice example of the accountability ladder. I learned this from the excellent Julie Zhou.

17 Apr 2022

One-size-fits-men

We're all different sizes, and there is no one-size-fits-all, but when it comes to the chosen size it turns out that that size mostly fits men better. Caroline Criado Perez in her book Invisible Women shares how so much of the designed world fits men better than women — examples include piano keyboards that make playing more technically difficult and more prone to injury for smaller hands, stab vests that didn't take account of breasts, crash test dummies for car seats tested only with males, toilets that always lead to queues, phones that don't fit female hands or pockets, and voice recognition that picks out male voices more easily. It's a stark reminder of how we need to do more to design with more of the world in mind rather than the default reference male. Read more: The deadly truth about a world built for men – from stab vests to car crashes. See also brilliance bias and the curb-cut effect.…We're all different sizes, and there is no one-size-fits-all, but when it comes to the chosen size it turns out that that size mostly fits men better. Caroline Criado Perez in her book Invisible Women shares how so much of the designed world fits men better than women — examples include piano keyboards that make playing more technically difficult and more prone to injury for smaller hands, stab vests that didn't take account of breasts, crash test dummies for car seats tested only with males, toilets that always lead to queues, phones that don't fit female hands or pockets, and voice recognition that picks out male voices more easily. It's a stark reminder of how we need to do more to design with more of the world in mind rather than the default reference male. Read more: The deadly truth about a world built for men – from stab vests to car crashes. See also brilliance bias and the curb-cut effect.

10 Apr 2022

Chesterton's fence

Chesterton's fence put simply is: Don't take a fence down unless you know why it was put up. It is tempting, in a spirit of progress, to want to do away with old designs, laws, policies, or institutions that no longer help. To think, perhaps, that the people that made them weren't maybe as smart as we are, or seeing things in the right way. Yet institutions, policies, or fences, weren't usually made by accident — they require effort and action, even putting up a fence. Chesterton's fence, after GK Chesterton, is a reminder that before we remove the old and perhaps replace it with the new we would do well to at least understand why the original was put in place. Once we understand why the fence was there in the first place if we still think it's of no use, then by all means pull it down. Read more on Chesterton's fence, including its origins.…Chesterton's fence put simply is: Don't take a fence down unless you know why it was put up. It is tempting, in a spirit of progress, to want to do away with old designs, laws, policies, or institutions that no longer help. To think, perhaps, that the people that made them weren't maybe as smart as we are, or seeing things in the right way. Yet institutions, policies, or fences, weren't usually made by accident — they require effort and action, even putting up a fence. Chesterton's fence, after GK Chesterton, is a reminder that before we remove the old and perhaps replace it with the new we would do well to at least understand why the original was put in place. Once we understand why the fence was there in the first place if we still think it's of no use, then by all means pull it down. Read more on Chesterton's fence, including its origins.

3 Apr 2022

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