Every number, case, and claim this practice publishes is held to the standard below. It is published so the work can be checked — challenge is part of the method, not a threat to it.
The filing, not the coverage. The holdings file, not the headline. The investor deck, read directly. Secondhand accounts are where precision goes to die — and sometimes the primary source quietly contradicts its own summary. When a claim here rests on a case, it rests on what the institution itself published.
Where a number can be computed, I compute it — and the method ships with the number, in the Ledger, so anyone can check the workings or reproduce them. A number without its method is an assertion wearing a costume.
Not everything that is true can be verified to the same standard, and the difference is stated rather than blurred:
Primary sources, end to end — every figure verified from the institution’s own published record, or computed directly. Nothing is Gold until everything in it is Gold.
Primary but partial — for instance, a computation on a top-50 subset rather than the full index. Used, and stated honestly as what it is.
Not used. A celebrated case that cannot be verified from primary sources does not appear in this work, however good the story — and I say so when asked.
The discard log is part of the method. Candidate cases that fail verification are recorded as discarded, not quietly reframed. A null result is treated as a finding in its own right: where the search for verified value comes back empty, that emptiness is itself a reading of the landscape.
Some of the claims I care most about — that carrying people through the transition is the most durable advantage of the reset, for one — are believed, not computed. They are said as belief, in those words, and never in the flat certainty of a computed finding. Asserting an uncomputed claim in the register of a computed one is the subtlest way to break an evidence discipline, and the rule here is simple: the reader always knows which kind of claim they are holding.
Why publish this? Because the standard is only worth something if it can be tested. If you find a number here that does not survive its own method, write to me — that note is worth more than agreement.
Derivations and workings are shared on request. No intake process, no gatekeeper — the note reaches me directly, and I reply myself.
It comes straight to my inbox, and I reply personally — usually within a day or two. I look forward to the conversation.