dave_SLC said:

One habit that pays for itself: post the method alongside the number.

This is exactly what I could not find anywhere else. I will report back once I have actually tried it.

Adding the clinical framing, because it changes how the question reads. Whatever the answer turns out to be, the method for getting there is the same: state the assumption, do the arithmetic in public, and invite the correction. That is slower than asserting, and it is the only version that survives being wrong.

Dr.PulmRoch said:

Whatever the answer turns out to be, the method for getting there is the same: state the assumption, do the arithmetic in public, and invite the…

Same pattern here, and in the same order. I had assumed I was the exception until I read this.

Dr.PulmRoch said:

Whatever the answer turns out to be, the method for getting there is the same: state the assumption, do the arithmetic in public, and invite the…

Coming at Dr.PulmRoch’s question from a different direction. Worth answering the question that was asked rather than the one behind it. The narrow version usually has an answer; the broad version usually does not, and answering the broad one is how a thread stops being useful.

The figures, for anyone assembling their own picture. Practical: whatever you change, write down the date and the reason. In three months the reason is what you will have forgotten, and the reason is what makes the record worth having.