Debug It!

Put It in Action

• Construct hypotheses, and test them with experiments.

  • Make sure you understand what your experiments are going to tell you.

  • Make only one change at a time.

  • Keep a record of what you’ve tried.

  • Ignore nothing.

• When things aren’t going well:

  • If the changes you’re making don’t seem to be having an effect, you’re not changing what you think you are.

  • Validate your assumptions.

  • Are you facing multiple interacting causes or a changing underlying system?

• Validate your diagnosis.

Footnotes

[10]	Students of the history and philosophy of science will realize that I am skating over many subtleties.
[11]	Not completely certain—a changing underlying system can get in the way of this kind of reasoning, but it’s an excellent ...