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Matt Parker
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“This is a common theme in human progress. We make things beyond what we understand, and we always have done. Steam engines worked before we had a theory of thermodynamics; vaccines were developed before we knew how the immune system works; aircraft continue to fly to this day, despite the many gaps in our understanding of aerodynamics. When theory lags behind application, there will always be mathematical surprises lying in wait. The important thing is that we learn from these inevitable mistakes and don’t repeat them.”
― Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors
― Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors
“Because we all make mistakes. Relentlessly. And that is nothing to be feared”
― Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors
― Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors
“In the mid-1990s, a new employee of Sun Microsystems in California kept disappearing from their database. Every time his details were entered, the system seemed to eat him whole; he would disappear without a trace. No one in HR could work out why poor Steve Null was database kryptonite. The staff in HR were entering the surname as “Null,” but they were blissfully unaware that, in a database, NULL represents a lack of data, so Steve became a non-entry. To computers, his name was Steve Zero or Steve McDoesNotExist. Apparently, it took a while to work out what was going on, as HR would happily reenter his details each time the issue was raised, never stopping to consider why the database was routinely removing him.”
― Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors
― Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors
Topics Mentioning This Author
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Science and Inquiry:
October 2017 Nominations
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20 | 126 | Aug 20, 2017 02:12PM |
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