FPF Reference

    Follow one question through several contributions

    Preface node heading:follow-one-question-through-several-contributions:1142

    What this page is

    This is generated FPF reference text from the specification preface or supporting sections. It helps interpret FPF; it is not FPF Reference product documentation.

    Methodology

    Use it to understand how the specification wants to be read, then return to a route, pattern, or work packet for active work. Cite generated IDs only when the wording changes the task decision.

    Content

    Consider a constructed example. A team is deciding how to help engineers review technical reports. A purchased assistant and a locally operated assistant remain candidates. The local candidate appears faster on the small set tried so far. The current question is whether that is enough to begin relying on the proposed review arrangement.

    Use C.16 to make the reported speed interpretable: which reports, which part of review, which assistance, which result, and which uncertainty does it cover? A time for extracting passages leaves open the time for checking their relevance and correcting errors. Use B.3 when the next decision needs an assurance answer: what exact claim does that trial support, what could defeat it, and which reports or operating conditions remain outside its basis? If the trial omitted reports containing tables, retain its result for the tested class and name the table-handling question for a further probe.

    The proposed arrangement also needs extraction, independent checking and final release review. Suppose their estimated weekly demand on the same engineer is respectively 3, 8 and 4 hours, while only 10 hours are available. The estimates apply to the same workload and the hours cannot be shared between these activities. Each activity fits individually; together they require 15 hours. The useful whole-arrangement result is a five-hour shortfall. The team can reduce the workload, provide additional qualified capacity, or change the arrangement and compare again. A better extraction time alone does not close that resource condition.

    B.1.5 becomes relevant if the team is also designing these contributions as one reusable Method: it asks how the part Methods, preconditions, results, order and failure handling make the whole action possible. For the present capacity question, the explicit workload and resource comparison are sufficient. The sequence written in a proposal supplies no additional evidence that the arrangement works.

    With these two candidates and the missing table-handling comparison, use C.11 when the team must decide whether another bounded probe is worth its cost before choosing. The proposed probe must be able to change that choice; the current candidate descriptions and qualified results remain available. A different question arises when the team needs a continuing research archive, a front or generation of further possibilities: C.18 then supplies that contribution. Use C.19 when the team must decide or reassess the exploration or exploitation policy for its still-live pool, such as the allocation of effort across several continuing lines. The local choice can proceed directly when neither of those broader questions is current.

    This example ends with three usable results: a qualified reading of the existing speed result, an explicit five-hour capacity shortfall, and a specific missing comparison. It leaves the deployment decision open. A later addition of qualified capacity changes the resource conclusion; a failure on tables changes the affected claim about report handling. Neither event erases the result on the original report class. This is how a reader can combine FPF contributions and then reopen only what a changed premise affects.

    Inquiry can stop earlier. A laboratory may need to explain why several performances differ before it has any preferred intervention. A.3.1.MR helps recover a candidate reusable way from the performance evidence; a counterexample can leave the candidate unresolved and identify what to observe next. The useful result is then a sharper hypothesis and discriminating observation. Choosing or deploying a solution becomes current only when the research question and evidence make that next move useful.

    Last Updated: 2026-09-05 — upstream FPF commit 9fba9529 (github.com/ailev/FPF)