It's a function of statistics, assuming each of the lines of code is an
independent distribution that is either correct or wrong.

Given the input assumption (95% of all source code lines are correct as
written the first time), then the code is correct if the individual lines
are all correct, which has probability P = 0.95^17.  This is more correctly
rounded to 42%, but it's in the right ballpark :)

On Mon, Nov 24, 2014 at 12:34 PM, Shoaib Sufi <[email protected]>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> At the bottom of:
>
> https://github.com/swcarpentry/bc/blob/gh-pages/novice/r/04-cond-colors-R.Rmd
>
> It states:
>
> 'Our final heatmap function is 17 lines long, which means that if
> there's a 95% chance of each line being correct, the odds of the whole
> function being right are only 41%. Before we go any further, we need
> to learn how to test whether our code is doing what we want it to do,
> and that will be the subject of the next lesson.'
>
> Where is the reference for making a statement like that - i.e. %
> chance of errors based on function length.
>
> Thanks
> Shoaib Sufi
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
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>
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