[DSRP Evidence](https://dsrpevidence.org/)

# Data Rabbithole

## Details

**Authors** Hope Wallace

**Year** 2024

**Publisher** Data Rabbithole (datarabbithole.com)

**Kind of work** course

**Discipline** Data Science

**Secondary disciplines** Education

**Kind of engagement** public

**Applied** false

[Read it](https://datarabbithole.com/)

## In authors' words

### What they set out to do (purpose)

The site sets out to put the six Mental Moves and DSRP in a reader's hands for use on wicked problems. The author states the aim as a vision that visitors will have the six Mental Moves and DSRP-483 in their pocket.

### How they did it (methods)

A self-published teaching site of about fourteen pages, framed throughout by Alice in Wonderland. An opening primer asks the reader to describe what they see and keep the list. An introductory essay argues for systems thinking by way of metacognition and names the four rules. Four pages take one pattern each, stating the rule and its two elements and posing practice questions. Five further pages cover the six Mental Moves — Is/Is Not List, Zoom In Zoom Out (counted as two), Parts Party, Barbell (RDS) and Perspective Circle — each as short numbered steps with a demonstration video. A closing Move Mash Up combines the patterns through cross-cutting questions and asks the reader to compare a new description against the list made at the start.

### What they found (results)

The site holds that systems thinking offers a way to better understand how we think, that the four rules are foundational to systems thinking, and that they operate simultaneously rather than in sequence. Each rule is stated with its two elements: a distinction has an identity and an other, a system has a whole and a part, a relationship has an action and a reaction, and a perspective has a point and a view. The Barbell move carries this further, taking two things, adding a relationship between them, distinguishing that relationship, and then giving the relationship parts so that it becomes a system in its own right. The Perspectives page holds that a perspective need not belong to a person and can be a technical platform or a step in a workflow.

## Commentary

### In short

A public teaching site, putting DSRP and six practice moves in the hands of readers working on big-data problems, framed throughout by Alice in Wonderland.

### In more detail

The author works in health insurance data operations. The argument runs from metacognition: systems thinking is presented as a way to understand how we think, and the four rules as the structures that thinking already uses. Each pattern gets its own page, stated as a rule with its two elements and followed by practice questions — what is the issue and what is not, what is in scope and out of it, whether a whole is also part of some larger whole, what runs in both directions or loops back, and whose vantage is being taken. A deck of cards carries the systems page: the deck is a whole, a part of a multi-deck game, and divisible by suit or by face and number. The six Mental Moves then turn each rule into an exercise, given as two to four numbered steps with a short video. The Barbell move is the most demanding of them, building a relationship into a system by distinguishing it and giving it parts. The closing Move Mash Up asks cross-pattern questions — what distinctions can be made between these relationships, what relationships exist among the various perspectives — and sends the reader back to the description they wrote on the first page to see what changed.

**Patterns it shows** D, S, R, P

**Added** 2026-10-14

**How to cite this** Hope Wallace (2024). Data Rabbithole. Data Rabbithole (datarabbithole.com).