Decisions ranging from those affecting the world to trivial day‐to‐day experiences involve choices among alternative images for the future. Usually images of the future are formed by perceived patterns of past behaviour. In essence, we attempt to perceive patterns in the records of the past, and improvement in these records will improve our view of the future. This type of thinking has been referred to as the “deductive spiral”, where records form the basis for all theory. We build theory or learning by gaining insights and improving on the data or records of the past.