The Scientific Method – Principles

That day, when Tanveer walked into his shop he was lost in his thoughts. The shop was working as usual. Charan was dispatching the delivery vans. Ram and Shyam, the two new hires were taking care of customers. An hour passed. As Tanveer was checking the entries on the computer's Tally software, Charan walked upto him and asked “Saar! Can I taalk to yooo?”

Tanveer looked up from his laptop and asked him to sit on a chair near him. “It sokay saar! I want to taalk about the foochar plaans!” Tanveer nodded and looked at him curiously. “Saar! Avar(our) delivry and sipping (shipping) is verry goood saar! But, if you advertije in aaall yareas (areas) simp simply, we cant deliver saar! So-o-oh (so) if we can do some ishtrategy (strategy) like this it weell(will) be goood saar!” He took a folded sheet of paper from his pocket and opened it up on his knee so that Tanveer could look at it. It was a map.

“Saar! Yestahday (yesterday), I taalking to my far relative, he ssowed (showed) me this type of map saar! This is waat is caalled map to ehscale (scale) saar! That is dishtense(distance) given here in centimeter can be converted to yaachual (actual) dishtense saar! You see-e-ih (see)! This yarea (area) marked in reddu (red) is our delivry yarea now. I calculated our delivry kaasht (cost) for this yarea saar! This silp (slip) has all details saar!” He took another folded slip from his pocket and spread it over the map. In it was written

Present	Future
Number of houses covered – 200 (orders)	Number of houses to cover - 300
Number of kilometers covered – 50 Kms	Number of kilometers to cover – 55 Kms
Number of litres of diesel – 4 Litres	Number of litres of diesel – 5 Litres
Number of delivery boys – 2	Number of delivery boys – 2
Number of drivers – 1	Number of drivers – 1
Cost of diesel – Rs. 200	Cost of diesel – Rs. 250
Cost of delivery boys – Rs. 300 (one day salary )	Cost of delivery boys – Rs. 300
Cost of drivers – Rs. 300	Cost of drivers – Rs. 300

After Tanveer looked at it, he questioningly looked at Charan. Charan continued. “Saar! I know that we get atleast a maargeen of Rs.500 on each house saar!. So avar total maargeen now is 1 lakh. If you look at the nambars saar, we can eezeelee (easily) get atleast a maargeen of 1.5 lakh saar, but we have to advertije. So-o-oh, eeven if you spend ten thousand on paamplates (palmphlets) avar profeets will bee more saar!”

Tanveer looked at the numbers. The logic was very good. Tanveer smiled at Charan and nodded encouragingly. “Saar! I maarked the yareas we can powkaas(focus) in blue color saar. Pleeese see. We can be big peepal (people) saar. We jusht have to do some ishtrategy, that is all saar!” And with this final statement, he handed over the map and the slip of paper to him and walked on to deal with his work.

Tanveer stared at the papers. What he liked was Charan's step-by-step approach to find a solution to the problem that they were facing. There is no where anyone could disagree with such a plan. Tanveer also noticed that Charan had reliable data to reach to his conclusions. No one can dispute the data. The distance, the cost, the margins, all were objective data. When compared to the advise Tanveer got yesterday, this advise was sound and it was practical.

Tanveer's mind started racing as he began forming new questions in his mind. This time his questions were more specific and sharp than before. After an hour of thought, Tanveer began wondering if it was time for him to start giving the big guys in business a run for their money.

The Scientific Method – The Principles

The scientific method encourages a decision maker to develop methods of analysis that result in objective knowledge. While subjective knowledge leads to an inaccurate view of phenomenon objective knowledge gives us a very highly accurate view of phenomenon. Charan's approach was objective because of two reasons.

First, his knowledge was reliable. Any two people looking at the data he used would reach to the same conclusion that he reached. Second, his knowledge was valid. He was using measurements that actually measured what he wanted to measure.

For example, in the scaled map he used, the centimeters were actual representation of the distances that were there in the real world. The scaled map was an instrument which converted “actual distances” into distances on the map. He was not using a “rough” map or an “approximate” distance. He was measuring what he wanted to measure, which is, the distance that he can cover. If he had not used the scaled map, his knoweldge would have become subjective as he had to depend on his senses and analysis for arriving at distances.

Principle – 1: Know what you want to know

Charan was able to develop his argument so convincingly because he knew what he wanted to know. Tanveer was trying to expand business and expected that an expanded business will bring in more profits. Charan knew that profits can be made only when revenues exceeded costs. So he wanted to find out what the costs of servicing the additional orders were. And if the orders brought in more reveneus than costs, they would get their margin.

To check if we know what we want to know, we use “Hypotheses” or statements that describe what we want to know. For example, Charan would have begun with the statement “Servicing households that are nearer to our existing service locations brings in more profit than servicing households that are farther to our existing service locations.” We will discuss more about hypotheses in a later post. But it is enough to say here that once a hypothesis is stated, we know what we want to know.

Principle – 2: Measure in numbers, calculate using numbers

Once we have stated our hypotheses, we must then answer two questions.

1. What is it that we should measure?
2. How should we measure it?

Charan knew that two things have to be measured clearly. Costs and Reveneus. The old costs and old revenues are available from records. But to arrive at the final cost of servicing new orders, Charan needed distances to be measured. Only then costs can be accurate.  

Now, there are two ways to measure distance. First, Charan could have gone and measured the actual distances using tape and second, Charan could have used the speedometer of a scooter or a van to measure the distances. These two would have taken a lot of time and effort. Charan would have to actually leave his present job and do the measurements. That would inconvenience the store. But, what Charan used was a “Scaled Map.”

Charan solved his problem of measuring distances using another way of measurement, which was easy and cost effective. Scientific Method encourages the development of such methods and procedures which facilitate measurement easily and cost effectively. This results in the net effectiveness of solving our problems.

Principle – 3: Use logic to arrive at conclusions

We make use of logic to make sense of what we observe. We tend to find out patterns in what we observe. Charan increased the cost of transportation, but kept the cost of delivery boys and drivers constant. Why is this so? Tanveer paid a constant salary to the delivery boys and drivers. Whether you make 200 deliveries or 300 it did not matter. Charan would have noticed this and had applied this logic to arrive at the cost figures. There are two important things to note here.

1. First, Charan should have observed that over a period of time the salaries of employees remained constant. So, he did not expect this to change. Charan arrived at a generalized principle that “Salaries of employees did not change over short periods of time” using specific examples over a period of time. This type of logic is called “Inductive Logic”

Inductive Logic is the process of arriving at general conclusions using specific examples

2. Second, Charan might have seen that this is not the usual time that salaries might change. That is during the period of implementation salaries did not usually change. So, Charan arrived at specific conclusion that the salaries would not change from the generalized logic from the previous example. This type of logic is called “Deductive Logic”

Deductive Logic is the process of arriving at specific conclusions using general principles

Enough said. In summary, the guiding principles of the Scientific Method are:

1. Direct observation of pehnomenon
2. Clearly defined variables, methods and procedures
3. Empirically testable hypotheses
4. The ability to rule out rival hypotheses
5. Statistical rather than linguistic justification of conclusions
6. The self-correcting process

The Concept Maps

Coming Next: The Scientific Method - The Process