When you hear hoofbeats, think horses; prefer the common explanation until the common one is excluded.
Woodward's teaching from around 1940, and the bedside form of Occam's razor. Hickam's dictum is its necessary check, since the elderly and chronically ill routinely have several conditions at once.
In practice
- A traveller home from Manchester with a fever has flu; the same fever after a month in the tropics earns the wider screen.
- A support engineer who checks the power supply before the firmware is following it, and one who does that with an elderly complex system is not.
- Standing
- The bedside form of Occam's razor, with Hickam's dictum as its check.
- Subject
- Decision-making & Reasoning
- Essay
- Razors, rules and the tools of careful thought