Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it

I just read an excellent article from esquire, called “Signs of Economic Depression“. Its about was about how people should of known about the economic crisis, but they failed to actually anticipate it because they are only taking into account current data. A great example is the following quote:

If you had done this calculation in January 2008, using data from the past sixty years…you would have estimated the chance of a crash in the upcoming quarter to be 3.17 percent, implying about one crash for every eight years of economic activity…But suppose instead that your time horizon is shorter. You decide to look only at data from the past twenty years …you would assess the probability to be just 0.04 percent — meaning one crash for every 624 years.

So by not taking into account all the information available, the economist’s calculation becomes very skewed, which ultimately effected their decisions. I think George Santayana said it best.

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Its exactly like approximation a function. If you are approximating a function, and you do not give enough points, then your approximation won’t be as good, which could mislead you when making decisions.

Unfortunately, not enough people do it. Not just regular people, but great leaders too. Hitler (not saying he’s a good person, but a good leader) did not know history, and decided to try and conquer Russia. But like Napoleon before him, he failed due to Russia’s harsh winter conditions.

As Sir Francis Bacon said,

Knowledge is power

So its important to do your research. This is especially true in software engineering, where projects failure rates are very high. However, failing projects might be a good thing, as long as you learn from your mistakes.