Scientists use big data to understand what separates winners from losers

Re:Scientists use big data to understand what separates winn... by perl4ever on Wednesday November 27, 2019 @07:37AM (#21647339)

This reminds me of (I think) Richard Feynman's comment about the Challenger, to the effect that when the o-rings were eroded by 1/3 or whatever, they called that a safety factor of 3, whereas they should have stopped and said "wait, it wasn't supposed to do that at all, something is seriously wrong".

I'm not sure if it was him or someone else that pointed out when you do a post-mortem on a disaster, you generally find a history of near-misses, but people don't take near-misses as seriously as they should.

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Re:Scientists use big data to understand what separates winn... by typhonic on Wednesday November 27, 2019 @09:08AM (#21647912)

The book Apollo by Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox shows a similar concept. In the investigation after the fire in Apollo 1, they found many possible near misses. But when each of those items did not lead to a failure, they became accepted. They poor designs or installations were allowed to slide and the accumulation of trouble spots kept increasing.

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Re:Scientists use big data to understand what separates winn... by michelpp on Wednesday November 27, 2019 @09:00AM (#21647854)

You're right, it was part of his opinion filed with the Rogers Commission:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_Commission_Report#Role_...

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