The original draft of this made sure to note that a) the levels aren’t really discrete in that you can be e.g. partway/ halfway/ mostly toward completing Level 2; and that b) it’s conceivably possible to complete them out of order, but that should be extremely unusual. I decided that explaining all of that would be a distracting “caveat overload”
Also, I don’t think your situation counts as bypassing levels. Level 1, by design, doesn’t say that you must have the standard equation in your model, or that you could provide it right this second. It just requires that you have a model that works. So if you know enough to generate a predictive, successful model, then you’re at least at Level 1, even if you need some time to flesh out the specific predictions.
The original draft of this made sure to note that a) the levels aren’t really discrete in that you can be e.g. partway/ halfway/ mostly toward completing Level 2; and that b) it’s conceivably possible to complete them out of order, but that should be extremely unusual. I decided that explaining all of that would be a distracting “caveat overload”
Also, I don’t think your situation counts as bypassing levels. Level 1, by design, doesn’t say that you must have the standard equation in your model, or that you could provide it right this second. It just requires that you have a model that works. So if you know enough to generate a predictive, successful model, then you’re at least at Level 1, even if you need some time to flesh out the specific predictions.