Friday, October 27, 2006
Cause and effect
Caller: "Hi, are you guys having problems?"
For some reason, when people call in and ask me that right away, it really bugs me. I'm not sure why. It's a reasonable question. Maybe it's just the fact that the problem is very, very rarely on our end, and that usually people who ask us this question are assuming that it is our fault and are sometimes unwilling to consider that the problem could possibly be on their computer.
Today, one such person called.
Me: "No, everything appears to be normal on our end. Are you having trouble connecting?"
Caller: "No, we had trouble for, like, two weeks, and then we replaced our hard drive, and we were able to connect again, so we kinda thought that the problem was you guys all along."
Here's an excellent example of inductive reasoning at its best.
1. Our connection was not working.
2. We replaced part of the computer, then the connection started working.
3. Our provider was obviously at fault.
For some reason, when people call in and ask me that right away, it really bugs me. I'm not sure why. It's a reasonable question. Maybe it's just the fact that the problem is very, very rarely on our end, and that usually people who ask us this question are assuming that it is our fault and are sometimes unwilling to consider that the problem could possibly be on their computer.
Today, one such person called.
Me: "No, everything appears to be normal on our end. Are you having trouble connecting?"
Caller: "No, we had trouble for, like, two weeks, and then we replaced our hard drive, and we were able to connect again, so we kinda thought that the problem was you guys all along."
Here's an excellent example of inductive reasoning at its best.
1. Our connection was not working.
2. We replaced part of the computer, then the connection started working.
3. Our provider was obviously at fault.
# posted by Terry @ 8:25 AM 
