Chapter 13 — Practice-on-your-own hints

When AI Misleads: Failure Modes and How to Catch Them • Companion page • Last updated 2026-07-18

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Short diagnostic hints for the two Practice on your own problems in this chapter. Attempt each problem before opening the hint. Complete answers appear in Appendix G of The Defensible Decision: Practice Workbook.

Problem 1 — the disagreement

Restated: A colleague reviews an AI-directed dashboard, runs the five diagnostics, scores two yes-answers, and says «below the vibe-charting threshold, ship it.» You review the same dashboard and score four yes-answers. Name the three most likely reasons the same artifact produced different scores, and name the escalation move that resolves the disagreement.

Show a diagnostic hint

Diagnostic cue. Score the artifact against the five diagnostics before accepting speed or polish as evidence of quality.

Complete answers appear in Appendix G of The Defensible Decision: Practice Workbook.

Problem 2 — the discard call

Restated: You inherit an AI-generated report from a colleague who has left. Running the checks surfaces two failure-mode patterns and three forcing-function violations. The colleague’s manager wants the report shipped by Friday. Name the reasoning that would justify a discard rather than iterate call here, and what you would say to the manager.

Show a diagnostic hint

Diagnostic cue. Make the discard, rebuild, or ship decision from evidence rather than surface plausibility.

Complete answers appear in Appendix G of The Defensible Decision: Practice Workbook.

Related on this site

About the three-tier Practice format

Each chapter of the book closes with a three-tier Practice block adapted from Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic’s course-adoption pattern in Storytelling with Data: Let’s Practice!: Practice with us (one worked problem with full solution in the book), Practice on your own (open problems with complete answers in Appendix G of the Practice Workbook; this page offers short diagnostic hints), and Practice at work (an open-ended prompt to apply the chapter’s move to a live artifact). This page hosts the middle tier.