Recursing over the Pareto Principle...

Vilfredo Pareto: don't got time to shave.

I keep hearing rather a bit too much about this Pareto Principle.

Apparently, with just 20% effort, correctly applied, I can achieve 80% of the desired effect. Marvellous stuff!

I was about to go ahead and do this when it occurred to me:

"Why waste all that time, doing a whole 20%?

"If I only did 20% of that 20%, then surely I could achieve 80% of the 80%?"

Then with a little more head scratching, and the help of an excel spreadsheet, I determined that with just 0.8% of the effort I could achieve 51.2% of the result -- which is a PASS in anyone's books.

So from now on, you will excuse me while I spend 99.2% of my time:

1. Lounging around, drunk, in a pool bar and

2. Determining exactly which 0.8% of the effort to apply myself to.

Unless, of course, it takes 80% of the effort to work out exactly which 20% will achieve the desired effect. And it takes...

'tarn' on Sun, 07 Jun 2009 10:15:42 GMT, sez:

Great idea! I like the reasoning and the recursion, but perhaps we can save even more effort.

If a pass mark *is* good enough:
0.8^x = 0.5
then
0.2^x = required effort
so
x = log(0.5,.8) = 3.1062837195053903
therefore
required effort = 0.67%

That's almost enough saved effort to post pointless comment. But if I only post 50% of the comm

'Haacked' on Sun, 07 Jun 2009 13:11:20 GMT, sez:

Umm, so explain this to me, is the point of this post to say that rather than spending 100% of your time doing those two activities, you'll only spend 99.2% of your time?

;)

'Andy Brice' on Sun, 07 Jun 2009 20:16:55 GMT, sez:

Unfortunately the only way to know which 20% will be successful is by trying the other 80% as well...

'anonymous' on Mon, 08 Jun 2009 06:11:51 GMT, sez:

fail, for preferring excel to logarithms

'Jef Allbright' on Mon, 08 Jun 2009 15:53:11 GMT, sez:

I found it fitting that at just about 51% in to your post, I realized I could stop reading.

'Imagist' on Mon, 08 Jun 2009 17:04:51 GMT, sez:

This is a vast misunderstanding of the Pareto principle.

The purpose of eliminating the 80% of the work that only gets 20% of your results is so that you can "spend" the 80% on something else. That is:

1. Take five people.
2. Remove the 80% of their work that results in only 20% of their results.
3. Combine the 5 groups of 20%, and now you have one job for one person that results in 4 times as much results.

'lb' on Mon, 08 Jun 2009 19:26:01 GMT, sez:

>fail, for preferring excel to logarithms

true -- lucky Tarn did my maths homework for me. Thanks Tarn.

'Don2' on Tue, 09 Jun 2009 01:33:48 GMT, sez:

>a vast misunderstanding of
>the Pareto principle

Or a careful reader may realise that it is in fact a joke, designed to parody that particular and common misunderstanding of the Pareto Principle.

'Mr Spock' on Tue, 09 Jun 2009 03:52:19 GMT, sez:

Parody? Is this related to that other mysterious human phenomenon called "humour"?

'Max' on Fri, 19 Jun 2009 23:32:44 GMT, sez:

My shampoo doesn't say repeat. It just says to lather and rinse.

'Max Pool' on Sun, 28 Jun 2009 17:42:33 GMT, sez:

LOL, you are very very correct, in fact the restaurant model has determined that exact equation as well that around 50% of their revenue is produced by the same 5% of their customer base.

There is one flaw to your thinking...it takes a life time of working experience to finally know which 20% to push on to get a 80% return and another life time to know when to stop ;)

'Toby' on Sat, 26 Sep 2009 23:08:13 GMT, sez:

If we really know which 20% to push on to get a 80% return, then the life will be so happy.

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