Gabriel Dos Reis a écrit :
Michel Lavaud <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
[...]
| > | This trend is especially common among experimental scientists, for two
reasons
| > | : first, they have lot of money so they can buy very expensive software,
and
| > | second, there is an inherent uncertainty in experimental results, so they
| > | translate their tolerance to errors in experimental results toward
tolerance
| > | to possible errors in commercial software, without realizing (or wanting
to
| > | realize) that errors in experiment and software are of a complete
different
| > | nature : error in an experimental measure is unavoidable and inherent to
| > | experimental work, while error in a software is completely avoidable
since it
| > | is pure mathematics, expressed in a computer language instead of plain
| > | English.
| >
| > That may be the case. In the interest of rigor and openness as you
| > promote, do you have data for that scenario we could all check so that
| > it does not appear to be a gratuitous anecdote?
| >
| >
| Once again, I'm not sure I understand the question : which data would
| you like that "all could check" ?
# [...] so they translate their tolerance to errors in experimental
# results toward tolerance to possible errors in commercial software
Ah, OK. You meant gratuitous interpretation, I suppose ? An
experimentalist has to be tolerant to errors because errors are inherent
to experiments. In particular, for him, a possible error in a program is
just one among _hundreds_ of other possible causes of errors. For a
mathematician, a possible error in a program used in an article is one
among _zero_ other possible errors (if his proof is correct, of course,
as also the proofs of theorems his article relies on).
Best wishes,
Michel
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