Principles of Operations Research—2. The Pirandello Principle

This is the second of a series of articles on principles of Operations Research. As the reader will note, these are somewhat different from similarly titled subjects in the usual textbooks.

The Pirandello Principle was named for Luigi Pirandello, 1867–1936, Italian novelist and dramatist. His philosophy, as espoused in numerous works, especially in “Right You Are If You Think You Are,” was that there is no absolute truth. In this particular drama, two protagonists who had drastically different interpretations of certain incidents agreed that, if they obtained certain additional information, they could resolve their differences. However, after the additional information was obtained, the situation remained as ambiguous as before; and so it remained as they gathered additional facts.