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Margin of Safety Principle

 Margin of Safety Principle


In airplane design, the engineers don't set out to build the strongest plane structures;

It would not take off due to its own weight

Rather the engineer uses the margin of safety principle that goes like this:

Looking at the structure, say rudder,

The engineers critically think: about how all these rudder parts can fail: failure modes: 

And making the structure strong enough to mitigate those failure modes;

ie., The margin of safety is greater than zero!


Critically thinking about what could go wrong and doing the work to mitigate those risks

Before taking action is much better than

Taking action in the guise of speed, comfort zone, and path of least resistance! 


The Road Less stupid

Keith J Cunningham