Cone Head!!

A topic that seems to come up time and time again that folk seem to either take to or not, is the idea of an 'uncertainty cone'. I briefly touched on this in a previous post where I was violently disagreeing with Woody Zuil and Nick Killick, not on their principle of #NoEstimates, since the method has definite merit, but on the specifics of the merit that it has.

I'll take this time to explain a little more about the cone of uncertainty for those who are not familiar with it, or who would like to see a more practical example of what it is. To do so, let's consider 10 flips of a coin as the example. There are 2 to the power of 10 possible combinations of 10 head or tale results.

Before rolling the die a first time, I want you to guess what the final total may be. How many heads do you think you'll get?

Well, if you think about all the combination (0 heads, 1 head, 2 head...) and thus build a histogram of all results, you get this:

number of heads when flipping a coin 10 times - University of North Carolina (via Google images)

I'll come back to this later, but you should have a number in your head. Let's now consider the range of all possible numbers of heads at the end from this point. i.e. before the first flip. You can either get a minimum of 0 heads, or a maximum of 10 heads, or of course, anything in between right? Cool.

1st Flip

When you flip the coin the first time, it comes up say, tails. This does two crucial things:

1. It gives you an actual result to work with, so you now have 9 uncertain results and 1 actual result.
2. Now that you have flipped a tail, you cannot get 10 heads. Given that in the above histogram which applies all the time, there is only one scenario, that scenario is now out! The best you can hope for is 9 heads, given you've flipped 1 tail.

Drawing up the table of min and max heads after the first flip we can see:

2nd Flip

Flipping the coin the second time, it comes up say, heads. This also does two crucial things:

1. It gives you an actual result to work with, so you now have 8 uncertain results and 2 actual results.
2. Now that you have flipped a head, you cannot get 0 heads, because you have at least 1. Given that in the above histogram which applies all the time, there is only one scenario with 0 heads, that scenario is now out! Your rage is now 1 head to 9 heads.

Put this in the table and flip again. Follow the rule that if you flip a head, you increment the minimum by one, otherwise you have flipped a tail so decrement the maximum heads by one (because you now don't have enough flips to get the previous maximum).

<<Fast Forward>>

10-Flips

10-flips completed

So we've completed the whole 10 flips, incrementing the minimum if we get a head and decrementing the maximum if we get a tail. Surprise surprise, by the end, we have two ends that meet in the middle (which is correct, because by that point, we have 10 actual results and thus, no uncertainty at all). You can double check this by counting the number of heads you got, which is 4 in this case, against the meeting point of the maximum and minimum, which is 4. If you don't, then you've banjaxed your counting, so you might want to ask a 3 or 4 year old for help next time.

Making the Cone

From this table, we simply have to plot the flip number against the minimum and maximum number of heads. So let's do that. I've also included the trend lines, in black, which show the trajectory of the minimum and maximum numbers. The gap in the middle is the level of uncertainty or variance:

cone of uncertainty

Let's recap what happened. At the beginning, we had no idea where we were going to end up [with how many heads], aside from the range of 0 to 10 heads. As we progressed, we reduced the size of the range of possible 'options' or heads we could get and by the end, we were where we were.

Map this to typical IT projects. At the beginning, we have no idea where we're going to finish. As we progress and choices are made (which honestly do sometimes seem random), we reduce the total number of potential options that we have (which isn't always a bad thing, especially if we discount the highest waste or risk options) and eventually, we come to rest somewhere. Also, despite everything, we always know where we're are starting. We're starting 'here'. The end of the last cone (or part thereof).

And the First Histogram?

Returning to the histogram, which is built up from a knowledge of all possible combination of coin flip (it is a closed probability space mind you, which isn't always the case in software), you can see straight from this that the best options for your guess is 5 closely followed by 4 and 6 heads. The curve is a bell curve, aka Normal Distribution, and in this case it is fine.

Epilogue

The only real difference with development is the probabilities in software development are somewhat conditional, since the decisions we make are not random, but somewhat stochastic, or at least Bayesian, since we ourselves learn and make better decisions or become more productive, which help us descend the cone faster. It's good enough, so should still be used, but if you're a masochist, then I best at least tell you that something has recently come to my attention in the field of theoretical statistics which may be useful for the part that is currently quantified normally. That something is the Tracy-Widom distributions, which appear ever to slightly skewed to the right. It's not something I've used [yet] and it is somewhat advanced, but I am excited to see where this field goes.