Morning Ed: Science {2018.09.10.M}

Will Truman

Will Truman is the Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. He is also on Twitter.

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6 Responses

  1. Michael Cain says:

    Sc1: Not the first time that division by zero was allowed. Old CDC machines supported it in hardware, returning the special value NaN (not a number) as a result. Any subsequent operation using NaN would fail. In numerical programming, division by zero is most often the result of an error in logic. The problem with the CDC approach is that the error is not detected until the NaN is used, which may be in a quite different part of the code. Pony’s producing a valid result will make finding such bugs even more difficult.Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to Michael Cain says:

      Agreed, the debugging of such code gets harder, but that’s about it. As you note, algorithms where a divisor could be zero should have a check built in to make sure that the operation can’t happen. Except people always forget to do such checks until it throws a NaN exception (or similar).

      Knowing that Pony won’t throw such an exception would discourage me from using it for math intensive work.Report

  2. Kolohe says:

    Sc1- I object to the lack of rigor in his pedantry, even with the update. I also object to the lack of any mention of L’Hopital. (the o needs a hat)Report

  3. LeeEsq says:

    Sc2: Its only a super villain origin story if you turn the diamond into a piece of jewelry after it gets hit with anti-matter. That way the person that puts it on will become some sort of wedding related super villain.

    Sc4: I think we call this irony.

    Sc5: The first link seems like the male equivalent of the alleged allure of bad boys to women. Your partner might be emotionally unstable but that can also mean more exciting than an emotionally stable person.Report

  4. Oscar Gordon says:

    Sc0: Love it!Report

  5. atomickristin says:

    Sc2 – Anyone who watches My Little Pony knows that Rarity already possesses that superpower.Report