[Nutella4]

To me, it reads like the conclusion and summary of a big statistical paper but ... there's no statistical paper. When I saw "Pair programming costs about 2.5 times as much as one programmer working alone" in the abstract I was really looking forward to seeing the data that led to that conclusion since the main problem with pairing discussions is the lack of data and surfeit of anecdote.

But there wasn't any useful data because the source, timing, measurement practices, and sample sizes for the grand summary tables were not mentioned at all. It's like reading an article that states very firmly that the moon is made up of precisely 89.24397% green cheese. It sure sounds very specific but where DID that number come from?

I hope the author publishes more details about how these numbers were calculated because we need more data about pairing but I don't really expect that he will.

More heat than light, really.