Responsibilities.

I work for a training firm. What we do is assist employees, usually federal ones, in developing skills, both for the job and --- often -- skills that are useful in other ways.

Over the last year my responsibilities have grown tremendously.

In May, I taught my first course, a 3-day with 5 participants. In June, I taught a 5-day course with neither backup nor a safety net. There were 18 people in the course. In July, I created the majority of a new course. It was a major rewrite of some curriculum, and I won most of the fights I was really interested in. Two weeks ago, my boss put me on call while he was teaching a class in case he needed to attend to family matters.

In August, I'm teaching 2 courses. There is one work day between the two. This will be a total of four classes taught this summer.

Last summer, working for the same company, I wrote some exercises and took a course from another division of our company.

This is a fairly sizable difference in responsibilities. I've become a trusted member of the workforce, and am directly interacting with our clients and representing the company.

If that's what a year has done, I wonder what another year will do?

On the nature of clothes not fitting.

I have difficulty buying suits. Apparently the ratio of my waist to my shoulders is a little off from the "standard". This results in a few problems that invariably cost me additional money.

My understanding is women have it a lot worse, and that it can be a challenge for many women to find clothes in stores at all.

I don't know how this is possible. Imagine going to a car dealer and not being able to fit into a car. Or to Chipotle and being unable to eat rice.

There are a few potential solutions. One is sites like etsy, or other ways of having clothes custom made. This need not be expensive, but it isn't a system-wide solution.

Instead, I'd to recommend a 2-sigma solution. Imagine a starting clothing company that has decided that 95% of the population will be able to find clothes off the rack. Assuming that the shape of the population is roughly normal, how would this be possible?

A few steps:
1. Take a sample of the population. Use about 385 individuals per sample, and try to reduce bias in the sample.
2. Measure everything about these folks. Inseam, waist, distance from waist to armpit, length of arm. Get the ratios. Figure everything out you need to make them clothes.
3. Repeat steps (1) and (2) a few times. Graph the points, and look for differences. From these multiple samples, create a 95% confidence interval.

Now you've measured a small sample of the population, and have a pretty decent interval measure. For optimal results, take measurements each season. Then not only do you know what clothes are needed, but you also know the changing shape of the population.

My guess is that I'm well within 2 sigma, and that many clothing stores simply do not cater to that wide of margins of the population.

The first company to do so should make a killing. The second to do so is liable to kill the first.