80/20 Principle.

Professor Zipf and Joseph Juran, elaborated on the Pareto curve. The 80/20 Principle supplies a very powerful empirical test of non-linearity in any system: so do 20% of causes lead to 80% of results? Richard Koch wrote about 80/20 Analysis and 80/20 Thinking.

• 80/20 Analysis - is precise; quantitative; requires investigation; provides facts and is highly valuable.
• 80/20 Thinking - is fuzzy; qualitative; requires thought; provides insight and is highly valuable.

It has been argued that the 80/20 Thinking component is much less likely to mislead you than is the conventional thinking. 80/20 Thinking is much more accessible and faster than 80/20 Analysis, although the latter may be preferred when the issue in extremely important and you find it difficult to be confident about an estimate. The business world has in fact long abided by the 80/20 rule. It is in fact particularly true for software in my opinion, where 80% of a product's uses take advantage of only 20% of its capabilities. Think of yourself and your personal computer. That means that most of us pay for what we don't want or need. In fact, software developers finally seem to understand this, and many are betting that most modular applications will now solve a particular problem. So effective innovations in information in data storage, retrieval and processing focus heavily on the up to 20% of key needs.

With the ABC Data Analyzer, the data is entered or imported into the spreadsheet area, where you highlight it and click on your choice of six graph types: histograms, control charts, run charts, scatter diagrams, pie charts and Pareto curves. The application of the 80/20 Principle actually implies that we should do the following:

1. celebrate exceptional productivity, rather than raise average efforts;
2. look for the short cut, rather than run the full course;
3. exercise control over our lives with the least possible effort;
4. be selective, not exhaustive;
5. strive for excellence in a few things, rather than good performance in many;
6. delegate or outsource as much as possible in our daily lives;
7. choose our careers and employers with extraordinary care, and if possible employ others rather than being employed ourselves;
8. only do the thing that we are best at doing and enjoy most (core competence);
9. look beneath the normal texture of life to uncover ironies and oddities;
10. work out where 20% of effort can lead to 80% of returns;
11. calm down, work less and target a limited number of very valuable goals rather than pursuing every available opportunity; and
12. make the most of those few "lucky streaks" in our life where we are at our creative peak and the stars line up to guarantee success.

So in closing, no sphere of activity is immune from the influence of the 80/20 Principle.

Prof Rory Dunn.