re: Sturgeon's Law

[John Strauss <jstrauss@gmu.edu>]

Poster: John Strauss <jstrauss@gmu.edu>

> Mi'lord Henry,
> 
> Would you please expound on "Sturgeon's Law" and enlighten those of us
> left in the dark by your reference, please?
> 
>                 /<    *Lord Gawain Kilgore, Chronicler of Sacred Stone*

Of course. My apologies: if I had meant the post to be public I might 
have taken more care not to be obscure.

Sturgeon's Law, reputedly coined during a SciFi Awards dinner or 
convention or some such, is "90% of everything is crap."

I personally take this to be a simplistic (and possibly overstated)
corollary of the Pareto Principle, aka the 80/20 Rule. In which it is 
observed that:

80% of the task is accomplishable with 20% of the total effort
(The other 20% results take 80% of the effort. Learning to identify that 
critical 20% task list is the Second Secret Key of Universal Mastery.)

80% of the work gets done by 20% of the workers

80% of the wealth is held by 20% of the population

80% of your complaints come from 20% of your customers

et cetera in astonishing and ubiquitous variety.


|      John Strauss             |      aka Henry Best          |
|      jstrauss@gmu.edu         |      henry@poboxes.com       |
|--------------------------------------------------------------|
| "People don't quit playing because they grow old. They grow  |
|  old because they quit playing."     -Oliver Wendell Holmes  |

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