Don’t limit yourself to a set of attributes and words, seek more, develop strategies for identifying new concepts and ways of exploring them for then you have manifested the spirit of Quaere.
How might I describe the process of model building?
I was writing some notes on ‘Testing’ and trying to think through how I might describe the process of model building.
And I wrote down a few words:
- Questioning,
- Exploration,
- Experimentation,
- Analysis.
Useful words methinks.
Marketers ruin everything
And then my marketing brain kicked in.
“What if you made an acronym?”
Q.U.A.E.R.E - An Acronym I could Market
OK, well, “Q” requires a “U”
- Usage?
And what else?
- R? for Reasoning
And feed all of that into an online anagram solver:
“Quaere”
“Quaere” a word “to seek”
The word “Quaere” coincidentally maps on very well to the process.
Since the word originates from Latin, to “seek, look for; ask”.
“Quaere” definitions:
- “To ask or query; used imperatively to introduce a question or signify doubt.”
- “ask; inquire (used to introduce or suggest a question).”
- “To query; to question. Frequently with whether.”
- Oxford Dictionary
- “inquire - used as a note suggesting further investigation of a point”
Mnemonics and Heuristics
Clearly at this point I should own this and present it as a branded Mnemonic.
“Quaere”, which would lead you to the individual words: Questioning, Usage, Analysis, Exploration, Reasoning, Experimentation.
And how would you use those words?
I see many presentations of lists of words as Heuristics, but I don’t think of individual words as heuristics.
I think of individual words as words.
But I could have a parameterized statement that works as a Heuristic that says “Meditate on an individual word to think of ideas to improve your testing”.
And the parameter is defined as “an individual word”
- “Meditate on [an individual word] to think of ideas to improve your testing”.
Becomes:
- “Meditate on Questioning to think of ideas to improve your testing”.
- “Meditate on Usage to think of ideas to improve your testing”.
- “Meditate on Analysis to think of ideas to improve your testing”.
- “Meditate on Exploration to think of ideas to improve your testing”.
- “Meditate on Reasoning to think of ideas to improve your testing”.
- “Meditate on Experimentation to think of ideas to improve your testing”.
I might think - what other parameterized heuristicesque sentences could I use?
- “Have I performed enough [an individual word]?”
- “Has my [an individual word] been good enough?”
- “Did my [an individual word] cover everything it could?”
- etc.
A Springboard for Ideas
As a springboard for ideas, word generation and cogitation can work well, I’m not knocking it, I just don’t think of a word as a Heuristic.
And I get nervous of lists in general because I have a tendency to view them as complete and frequently do not see the invisible “etc.” at the bottom of every list, which reminds me to expand the list, own it, and add to it.
Don’t limit yourself to this set of attributes, seek more, for then you have manifested the spirit of Quaere.
Related Reading
Newer readers might like to read my earlier mentions of Stichomancy:
