Base10 was in macro class last night when he realized that truly brilliant ideas are obvious, but only after someone thinks of them. It came up with a tweak to the Solow growth model. You say to yourself afterwards, "I could have done that. It was obvious."

Indeed, it is. But onlly after some brilliant guy thought of it first. This kind of thing struck me once before when I was taking econometrics. The topic that time was kernel estimation. Basically, this technique allows you to empirically estimate a probability distribution based on a sample of data. It's also often used for smoothing data. Without going into the specifics of the technique, it is--again--quite simple.

What is it about ideas like this? Why are they obvious to everyone after they are uttered, but it takes a brilliant person to see them in the beginning? Base10 doesn't know, but he would like to be one of the people that thinks of ideas like this first.

- posted by Base10 @ 11:02 AM