John During one lesson in the physics laboratory at school - in the 1950s! - I was told that experiments (tests) never fail. IIRC, the idea of our superb physics master was that you shouldn't enter into any scientific experiment with a preconceived idea what the result should be. Thus you can't get into the situation that you "succeed" if you get the result you expect and you "fail" if you get another result.
There is, of course, a sense where an experiment either succeeds or fails depending on how clear a result you get but this is a matter of how well or otherwise you design the experiment. Your post brought back the memory of that important lesson! Chris Mason On Fri, 9 Dec 2011 14:47:25 -0600, McKown, John <[email protected]> wrote: > ... > >I couldn't think of any reason it would be a problem. But I just was too >anxious to wait to see on the 18th. I wanted to test this weekend, but did not >get ready in time to put in the request. And, around here, you get "dinged" if >you do something without a request. And you also get "dinged" if you put in a >request to test something, and then don't do it. So it's difficult to get >permission to "test, if I'm ready, but not test if I'm not ready". And doing a >test which "fails" also gets a "ding". FVSO "fail". Because if you don't get a >failure when you want one, your test failed to fail, which is a failure? I get >so confused some times. > >-- >John McKown ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
