Knowledge and Ignorance over Time

Paul C. said that he's still far from a database expert. So am I. But I've been learning, since about 1980.

Over time (a long time!) I've noticed a pattern in the growth of my knowledge.

If my knowledge base is likened to a sphere in a boundless universe, here's the pattern:

My apparent knowledge grows like the radius of the sphere (like R). My apparent ignorance grows like the surface area of the sphere (like R squared).
And the number of things I must keep in my head grows like the volume of the sphere (like R cubed).

At some point, this looks like a case of diminishing marginal returns. But I wouldn't choose to go back to being as ignorant as I was when I was twenty, even if I got to be as smart as I was when I was twenty. Received on Tue Dec 13 2005 - 09:38:00 CST