---
id: 2025-12-18T14:18:00-0500
title: 2025-12-18 14:18:??
tags:
daily: "[[2025-12-18]]"
---
# 2025-12-18 14:18:??

## Estimating Golf

What interests me most in [[construction-estimating]]
is an idea you might call "estimating golf":
the goal is to produce a satisfactory[^1] estimate,
but the estimator can not view the project documents
and must instead ask questions about the job
(answerable in a sentence or less)
of a neutral party ("the reader").
The estimator fails if the estimate is unsatisfactory[^1],
but otherwise is scored by number of questions asked.

[^1]: satisfactory in terms of accuracy and precision,
    according to the standards of the organization.
    a control estimate must be prepared accordingly
    by a neutral party ("the control").

You could further imagine different brackets
for required accuracy and precision,
whether organization historicals are freely available
or must be questioned like project details.

The most interesting part of this problem is choosing when to stop,
since it requires one to estimate their certainty of their estimate.
