Humble Pi
A book about all kinds of math mistakes.
Contents
Losing track of time
Math problems with time. Many issues with computer’s limited capacity to track time (e.g., storing milliseconds using a variable with fixed number of bits) and different calendars, etc.
Engineering mistakes
Little data
Issues caused by missing data and excel failures.
There are genes with names that resemble a date, such as “MARCH5”, which is automatically converted to a date when read by Microsoft Excel. See Spreadsheet problems in Biology.
Out of shape
As a general rule, doors should open in the direction they would need to in an emergency. Because of the location of the hinges, a door opens easily in only one direction; every doorway has a bias one way or the other.
In 1883, there was tragedy with many children due to this issue at the Victoria Hall Theatre in Sunderland near Newcastle. Same issue with the Apollo 1 tragedy.
There are many shapes – that are not a circle – with multiple identical diameters. Thus measuring diameters is not enough to guarantee a circular shape.
You can’t count on it
counting mistakes regarding the inclusion (exclusion) of the starting point. Why the musical interval is weird.
Does not compute
Overflow (e.g., radiation machine), truncation (patriot missile), …
Probably wrong
Miracles happen when there are enough trials.
Put your money where your mistakes are
The story of The Making of a Fly - algorithmic pricing that went far to make it $23,698,655.93.
A roundabout way
Rounding only up or down can make a huge difference long term.
Too small to notice
Airplance bolt story (June 8, 1990; British Airways in Birmingham Airport)
Units, conventions, and why can’t we all just get along?
Stories about unit conversion problems.
Stats the way I like it
There is no “average person” if you consider many aspects of demographic characteristics. This is related to the unintuitive phenomenon of high-dimensional space where there’s almost no probability mass near the origin of a normal distribution in a high-dimensional space.
If you create a uniform by taking average of all possible characteristics, it will fit no one. The average person doesn’t exist
Tltloay Rodanm
Does not compute
So, what have we learned from our mistakes?
“Hot” Swiss cheese model