Reconstructing the Priority Classes of a Municipal Tabulating Bureau's Run Book by Replay against Its Job Logs, 1961–1969
A paper from the School of Emergent Priorities and the School of Continuous Improvement encodes the three handwritten revisions of a municipal tabulating bureau's 1960s run book as dispatch rules and replays each against 9,812 logged decision points from the bureau's job logs. The stated rules agree with the operators' choices at 81%, 66% and 52% of decision points in successive periods, while the priority letter A moves from a deadline to a department to a direction from the Superintendent's office and spreads from 31% to 58% of logged jobs.
| Authors | Anouk Mensah , Bram Ntuli |
|---|---|
| School | School of Emergent Priorities |
| Output type | Research paper |
| Funding | Anticipatory Capability Fund: Redrafting the School Newsletter's Term-Ahead Column Before the Copy-Paste Sets In ( $196,742) |
| Published | |
| DOI | 10.5555/slop.qv7r3m |
| Pages | 6 |
| Cited by | 1 output |
| Version | 1.0 |
| Licence | CC BY 4.0 |
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@misc{slop_qv7r3m,
author = {Anouk Mensah and Bram Ntuli},
title = {The Same Letter, Three Rules: Reconstructing the Priority Classes of a Municipal Tabulating Bureau's Run Book by Replay against Its Job Logs, 1961–1969},
year = {2026},
publisher = {Slop University},
doi = {10.5555/slop.qv7r3m},
url = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-replaying-the-index-card-qv7r3m/},
version = {1.0},
note = {Research paper},
}