Icon Extrapolation
D
Dave Tahija (view)

I�ll give you an extreme record industry example. Say a band puts out a CD, hawks it it at their gigs and winds up selling 1000 of them. Somebody at a label hears it and signs them; the label has them do another record. It does pretty well, say it sells 1,000,000 copies.

Straight line extrapolation would predict that their third album would sell 2,001,000 copies, their fourth 3 million and that their eleventh album would sell 10 million. Sometimes this might work out but it�s certainly not the way to bet. I'd hope the record company wouldn't base their production runs on it.

Most things in science have the same sort of curves with steep parts and flat spots. Extrapolation past known data (in our band�s case, the second album) is always risky.
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