Week 9 Session: Midpoint check

The session where you declare a rule in writing before testing it, and say out loud how many rules you tried first.

3 May 2027

Before the session#

Do the thing this morning’s lecture asked for: find a rule that would have avoided your worst decision since week 1. Then count how many rules you looked at while finding it, honestly, including the thresholds you nudged and the ideas you discarded in ten seconds.

In the session#

Declare (15 min). Write your rule and its exact thresholds on the sheet, sign it, hand it in. Once it is in, it does not change for three weeks. This is the only session in the course with a document you cannot amend afterwards, and it is here because a rule you can adjust is not a rule being tested.

Say the number (15 min). Round the room: observations, and attempts. The ratio is the interesting part and hearing thirty of them in a row is more convincing than being told what the ratio usually is.

Log audit (20 min). Swap logs with the person beside you and try to reproduce one of their numbers from the other numbers on the page. If you cannot, they have a gap to fix before the final project, and it is much cheaper to find it today.

Afterwards#

Run the declared rule forward for the remaining three weeks without touching it and record what it does, including nothing. Both outcomes are usable in the final project; an adjusted rule is not, because adjusting it makes it attempt number 41.