Straight_Man
8 Apr 2004, 3:49am
I use several pieces of this and that garnered from lots of reading over the years:
First, I honestly believe that what Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made Sherlock Homes say, explaining a three-pipe problem to Dr. Watson, AFAIK, is true.
Essentially, he said this: When all other things have been eliminated, what ever remains, HOWEVER IMPROBABLE that thing is, MUST be true.
I'll give you a Sherlockian case summary, in American colloquial:
Older guy, healthy but not too good of vision, passes away in a locked room, of a snake bite, right next to an old fashioned bell pull used to summon servants-- he had a hold of the bell pull, bell in servant's quarters never rang. How did it happen??? Well, room was locked, Window shut, AFAIK. No snake obviously in room. Man dead.
Logic, to get bit by kind of snake that killed man beofre he could even change expression, snake HAD to have bitten man IN room.... Cut to end conclusion. Snake was put on bell pull (actually, REPLACED bell pull which was a decorative ROPE-LIKE thing hanging from ceiling) by a servant who hated this irrascible old man. Man went to summon servant, reached for bell pull, got bit by snake. Servant heard thud as man fell, entered room with protective gloves on, put snake in bag, removed snake, REPLACED BELL PULL, and servant had a spare key to room so he locked it and left master's keys in master's pocket.
Sherlock used Modus Ponens, Occam's Razor, and Modus Tolens to solve problem. In short sense, he eliminated the obvious first, and what was left added up to an oddball but true set of circumstances as outlined above.
How does this help TECHS??? Well, let's say you have a video problem, and changing drivers more than once does not fix-- instead problem gets worse. Problem, then, is not just drivers. I have discovered so many hardware setup (in BIOS) or physical hardware problems by saying "this is probably not software after two-three driver fixes apparently malf things worse and worse (and looking for hardware diags and using them),
that it is NOT FUNNy to list how many there were.
Basically, modus tolens says that if other users can fix with same drivers and you can't fix same thing same way, look at hardware and BIOS in detail. Probably not software then, by modus tolens, as if software were problem, software fix would FIX problem. IF not software fix solves problem, then probably is NOT software.
Back to Sherlock. Sherlock used what became known as Occam's Razor plus algorithm process logic (modus Ponens, Modus tolens, and what is now in Bayesian Condition Set-implemented theory also, in part) to isolate between what could and what did happen. THEN he gathered evidence and proved by solving case. So do I, but for computer systems.
What tech troubleshooting mottoes do you all use???? How have they helped you??? Where did they come from??? THAT is what I would like to see here, logic and truisms that apply to tech-- since this is a tech site, let's talk tech diagnostic "rules of thumb" and why we use them. Here is a basic logic set to begin with....
Oh, sometimes the problem is the user, though the result may be a mess of a hardware problem. Mom discovered she had no CD-ROM drive when the CD-ROM she tried to play in her 5-1\4 floppy drive both ruined drive and CD (floppy read head scraped heck out of CD while bending itself, computer locked until drive was removed and CD extracted and bent read arm discovered and both CD and drive trashed. But, in that case, my other problem solver is to teach that CDs do not go in old-style floppy drives or something else I would think obvious but she -- or he in customer's case -- had no idea about because she (or he) had not run into that problem to know what absolutely NOT to do. Motto here is teach around false assumptions for me in this forum and with customers, but show why they can be false in so doing.
Mom :Pwned: herself in this case. She never did that again. BTW, she and I BOTH laugh about this last thing still, 15 years later.
John D.
First, I honestly believe that what Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made Sherlock Homes say, explaining a three-pipe problem to Dr. Watson, AFAIK, is true.
Essentially, he said this: When all other things have been eliminated, what ever remains, HOWEVER IMPROBABLE that thing is, MUST be true.
I'll give you a Sherlockian case summary, in American colloquial:
Older guy, healthy but not too good of vision, passes away in a locked room, of a snake bite, right next to an old fashioned bell pull used to summon servants-- he had a hold of the bell pull, bell in servant's quarters never rang. How did it happen??? Well, room was locked, Window shut, AFAIK. No snake obviously in room. Man dead.
Logic, to get bit by kind of snake that killed man beofre he could even change expression, snake HAD to have bitten man IN room.... Cut to end conclusion. Snake was put on bell pull (actually, REPLACED bell pull which was a decorative ROPE-LIKE thing hanging from ceiling) by a servant who hated this irrascible old man. Man went to summon servant, reached for bell pull, got bit by snake. Servant heard thud as man fell, entered room with protective gloves on, put snake in bag, removed snake, REPLACED BELL PULL, and servant had a spare key to room so he locked it and left master's keys in master's pocket.
Sherlock used Modus Ponens, Occam's Razor, and Modus Tolens to solve problem. In short sense, he eliminated the obvious first, and what was left added up to an oddball but true set of circumstances as outlined above.
How does this help TECHS??? Well, let's say you have a video problem, and changing drivers more than once does not fix-- instead problem gets worse. Problem, then, is not just drivers. I have discovered so many hardware setup (in BIOS) or physical hardware problems by saying "this is probably not software after two-three driver fixes apparently malf things worse and worse (and looking for hardware diags and using them),
that it is NOT FUNNy to list how many there were.
Basically, modus tolens says that if other users can fix with same drivers and you can't fix same thing same way, look at hardware and BIOS in detail. Probably not software then, by modus tolens, as if software were problem, software fix would FIX problem. IF not software fix solves problem, then probably is NOT software.
Back to Sherlock. Sherlock used what became known as Occam's Razor plus algorithm process logic (modus Ponens, Modus tolens, and what is now in Bayesian Condition Set-implemented theory also, in part) to isolate between what could and what did happen. THEN he gathered evidence and proved by solving case. So do I, but for computer systems.
What tech troubleshooting mottoes do you all use???? How have they helped you??? Where did they come from??? THAT is what I would like to see here, logic and truisms that apply to tech-- since this is a tech site, let's talk tech diagnostic "rules of thumb" and why we use them. Here is a basic logic set to begin with....
Oh, sometimes the problem is the user, though the result may be a mess of a hardware problem. Mom discovered she had no CD-ROM drive when the CD-ROM she tried to play in her 5-1\4 floppy drive both ruined drive and CD (floppy read head scraped heck out of CD while bending itself, computer locked until drive was removed and CD extracted and bent read arm discovered and both CD and drive trashed. But, in that case, my other problem solver is to teach that CDs do not go in old-style floppy drives or something else I would think obvious but she -- or he in customer's case -- had no idea about because she (or he) had not run into that problem to know what absolutely NOT to do. Motto here is teach around false assumptions for me in this forum and with customers, but show why they can be false in so doing.
Mom :Pwned: herself in this case. She never did that again. BTW, she and I BOTH laugh about this last thing still, 15 years later.
John D.