v0.9 Documentation
This project has the objective of offering a collection of tools and workflows to help someone who needs to do statistical research on a set of data.
That person is probably an expert in the specific domain of knowledge reflected in that set of data, but is almost certainly not a database expert, a statistician, a software developer or an AI expert.
The workbench supplements the researcher with a lot of those extra skills.
There is a historical analogy here.
The first reading glasses, the earliest form of eyeglasses as we know them, emerged in Italy around the end of the 13th century. While the true identity of their inventor is lost to history, their creation marked a significant leap forward for literate society.
Before the invention of spectacles around 1300, a skilled artisan—a scribe, a jeweller, a metalworker, a weaver—faced an inevitable biological limit. Around the age of 40, the eye's lens naturally hardens, a condition known as presbyopia, making it nearly impossible to focus on the fine details essential for their trade.
This was a hard stop. These highly trained individuals, who had spent decades mastering their craft, faced a "massive drop off in productivity," often forced to abandon their professions entirely. An artisan's most productive years were, by default, cut short in their 40s
The invention of reading glasses wasn't just about seeing clearly; it was about thinking, working, and innovating for longer. It turned a natural, debilitating decline into a period of continued contribution, effectively rewriting the economic rulebook on the value of older, experienced workers.
In a related way, many changes in the world mean the creation of whole new areas of invention can make an experienced professional gradually less and less capable due to advances outside his specialist area... “going less and less able to see the wider implications of things”
AI used carefully acts like “glasses for the mind”... experienced workers can remain productive despite needing to use other skill sets that they can not have time to become competent in. The world has become far too complex with hundreds to specialist disciplines and no one can be expert in more that a tiny fraction of them.