Saturday, August 11, 2012

The aggregation of marginal gains


I’ve spent a fair bit of time watching the Olympics on the tele’- mainly the cycling as this something that I used to do in another life. Team GB dominated most of the cycling, as did GB riders in the Tour de France. Their domination is put down to a strategy they call the aggregation of marginal gains. Basically lots of small improvements add up into a measurable advantage. (I guess the opposite to the law of diminishing returns!) This got me thinking about my recent post “Some thoughts on mandolin design” and how that it could easily be sub-titled “The aggregation of marginal gains”- a tweak of the neck angle, a change to the profile of a brace, the sound board 0.25mm thinner etc. no one modification is enough to make a great difference but all of them added together!
The aggregation of marginal gains- all serious luthiers should live by this!
Alan’s mandolin update
As always it’s a great relief when an instrument has arrived safely in its new home- Alan’s mandolin got there and here are his initial thoughts on the Mandolin Cafe forum.

1 Comments:

Blogger James said...

Hi – will you post your Blog at The Luthiers Community ay vorts.com? Our members (which include other luthiers, players) will love it.
It's easy just cut and paste the link and it automatically links back to your website… it’s a win win.
We are just getting started and could really use your help. It’s free and easy.
Email me if you need any help or would like me to do it for you.
The Luthiers Community: http://www.vorts.com/luthiers/
Thanks,
James Kaufman, Editor

3:33 pm  

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