Predicting invariables

Some years ago, I lamented that data scientists are not spending enough time on predicting "invariables", while we spend a lot of time predicting "variables" (HBR link).

While writing a future blog post earlier today, I encountered a perfect example. Apple Keynote.

One of the most annoying features in Keynote is that a text box opens up by default with a "centered" alignment, rather than anchoring the text at the top left corner.

No matter how many times I immediately changed the alignment to top and left upon inserting a new text box, the software does not predict that this is what I want, and continues to use the centered default. In many years of usage, I must have sent this same signal thousands of times.

The beauty of "invariables" is that they are easy to detect, and the accuracy rate is super high.