A Drake Equation for TM1 Model Complexity?

I'm heading west next week to look up at the Milky Way galaxy in the dark skies of Eastern Oregon. I will be standing on an open plain in the shadow of 14,000-year-old cave dwellings, pondering the first 50 years of my time on this planet. And I will undoubtedly also be pondering the Drake Equation (N = R* * fp * ne * fl * fi * fc * L) that seeks to ask, "what are the chances that there is other intelligent life in the universe?"

OK, you know you’re a nerd when you start relating aliens to work. But I do often think about the Drake equation when discussing the "combinatorial complexity" in visualizing and documenting TM1 data models.

So, last week I started imagining a Drake equation for hidden errors / bugs in TM1 Models and what it might look like. My first draft started to look something like this: N = Number of yet to be discovered errors / bugs in your TM1 model (N = C(n) * D(n) * R(n) * P(n)).

Needless to say the numbers are enormous even when you stay in the realm of first order relationships between just a few objects (think 3 cubes, 2 dimensions, 2 cube rules, 2 TI processes). I built a calculator for this. If you're interested, send me a DM and I will send you a copy.

This all leads me to the simple conclusion that we will never travel to the stars ourselves with our regular old human, organic brains and bodies. Just as we will never likely solve TM1 model complexity by brute force manual documentation and relying solely on the expert minds to cut through complexity in multidimensional data models. There are simply just too many possible combinations to consider.

In honor of Elon Musk becoming the richest person on this planet, I offer this:

We will use robots and communication relays to travel the stars and if we ever have a chance of truly understanding and controlling multidimensional model complexity, we will use software to document our software (TM1 data models).

Phew ... can you tell I'm ready for a vacation?!?!

-Scott Felten, GM, QUBEdocs

#Drakeequation #tm1 #qubedocs #automation #elonmusk