| |||||||||||||
What is Science?What is Science?Posted Jun 30, 2012 19:28 UTC (Sat) by Kluge (guest, #2881)In reply to: What is Science? by Wol Parent article: Why learn C? (O'Reilly Radar)
"Feynman gives a very good example of a rogue data point setting quantum mechanics or something like that back 20 years - they didn't bother to see if any data points were rogue, so the "wrong" answer was used and messed up everything else until the problem was spotted - MANY years down the line."
Reference?
(Log in to post comments)
What is Science? Posted Jun 30, 2012 23:40 UTC (Sat) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]
It's mentioned in "Surely you're joking, Mr Feynman" or "What do you care what other people think"
But it was something like someone did an experiment to determine the spin of some particle. There was one data point that was way out, and actually was sufficient to dominate the result. Unfortunately it was the wrong result.
However many years it was, down the line, Dick looked at what he was doing and said "hey, if that particle was actually the opposite spin, everything would make sense". Then he went back to the original proof and said "hey, I remember thinking that proof was screwy, when it first came out!". Then he actually checked the maths, and said "ooopppsss".
Cheers,
|
|||||||||||||