I came across a very useful little piece of software last week while I was grappling with a particularly sensitive analytical problem. I couldn’t afford to be wrong and I was worried that my biases might mislead me. With that in mind I decided to use Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH). Unfortunately there were so many little bits of evidence that the pen and paper method soon bogged down. A quick search on Google however led me to PARC ACH.

PARC ACH is a rather utilitarian little piece of software. There is no glitz. The UI is basic. Little glitches are inclined to spring up. I can’t seem to get it to print on my MacBook Pro. But what it does it does well.

The dirty work of ACH is much easier with the PARC software. It handles both inconsistency and weighted inconsistency scores. You can sort evidence by order addedd, diagnosticity, type, credibility, relevence, or even user criterion. Best of all it comes with a built in ACH tutorial that will guide you through the process if you are a newbie or just a little rusty.

If you hooked your laptop to a large screen monitor or multimedia projector PARC ACH would make a good collaborative tool. The whole team could readily see the effects of changes without being slowed by the need for someone with neat handwriting.

Did I mention that it is free?

Tags: Software, Tools