Interesting article. I recall reading a story about how Roger Tory Peterson
used his system of bird identification through key field marks and pattern
recognition, to develop a very successful enemy aircraft identification
system for the U.S. armed forces during WWII.
Regards,
Daniel Bastaja
e-mail: birdingfaqs at hotmail.com




>From: JLRosso at aol.com
>Reply-To: JLRosso at aol.com
>To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
>Subject: Sibley and the Harvard Business Review
>Date: Tue, 07 Jan 2003 15:30:37 -0500
>
>I came across a November 2002 article in the Harvard Business Review which
>is a novel approach to birdwatching. The title is Spotting Patterns on the
>Fly: A Conversation with Birders David Sibley and Julia Yoshida. Basically
>it concerns how the study of birds teaches one how to quickly spot
>patterns. A person in business would do well by being able to recognize
>business patterns and one of the best ways of learning this is to learn how
>to birdwatch since birdwatchers are very good at taking a little bit of
>information and coming up with an identification, recognizing a pattern.
>The short article is an interview with Sibley, and Julia Yoshida who is a
>medical doctor who also birds. The questions range from "At heart, pattern
>recognition is the art of finding order in often chaotic masses of data. As
>you go about identifying birds, just how many species are you dealing
>with?" to "can you describe how you begin to identify patterns? In
>business, pattern recognition still seems to be more of an art than a
>science."
>"Sibley explained how expert birders draw on a wealth of tacit knowledge
>built up over the years to make split-second identification on the basis of
>incomplete information."
>
>When I think of how birdwatching was evaluated back in the fifties when I
>started, this article represents a true milestone in appreciation and
>recognition. You can find HBR in good libraries or you can order a PDF
>document for $6 online at their website.
>
>Jim Rosso
>Arlington Virginia
>703-685-2426
>jlrosso at aol.com


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