The SWAG Formula

Ah yes, I remember her well, but I'm pretty sure her name was Mrs. Hradek. My mother told me it was a Czech name, although the Czechs pronounce it a little differently than we did. She was far and away the best teacher I ever had. She made the subject come alive, which is not the easiest thing to do with math. If I had her for trigonometry I might have gone on to college and become a professional forester when I grew up. Then again, maybe not. There were other factors, but one of them was that foresters need to know trig. I think I use Euclidian logic in my daily life, but not exclusively because, as Uncle Ken says, real life is messier than math. The biggest problem is that, in real life, we seldom have all the data that we need to make a purely logical decision. The best was can do is to logically evaluate the data that we do have, and then fill in the blanks with whatever other method we have at hand.

My job for most of my time in the army was Fire Direction Controller for the 81mm mortars. Mortar crews seldom have visual contact with their targets, they set their sights on an aiming stake, and then I would tell them what corrections to make from there. There's more to it than that, but that will have to do for now. One time, Robert Morris Baker, who was my mentor, pulled off some kind of shot that wasn't in the book, and this young lieutenant asked him how he had done it. "I used the SWAG formula, sir." Baker replied laconically. "Of course, the SWAG formula. Why didn't I think of that?" mumbled the lieutenant as he wandered away. After he was gone, I asked Baker to explain the SWAG formula to me, since I had never heard of it before. "Scientific Wild Assed Guess", he intoned authoritatively. I vowed to remember that, figuring it would come in handy some day, and it has.

Old Dog is right, talent isn't everything, but it's the determining factor, all other factors being equal. Of course, all other factors are seldom equal, so there you go.