Re:Neutrino experiment affirms faster-than-light claim
by saurik on Friday November 18, 2011 @12:19PM
(#3252474)
"trusted code based on NumPy" <- (Just to note, a number of NumPy's routines have seemingly known numerical instability issues; I would not trust it, and was burned by it badly a few months ago. If you've used a specific function before and it seemed to work, then that's great; but if you haven't: watch out.)
If the first lab used C++, and the second lab used Matlab and its libraries, and the third lab used trusted code based on NumPy, I would be surprised if their errors were strongly correlated. Brand new code? Sure. But not code they've used for several years through multiple experiments, or code that's part of a widely-used software package.
The thing is, labs working in similar areas most likely have ready, tested, trusted software toolkits for doing similar tasks, especially when it comes to data analysis.
It may seem to a programmer that the fastest, easiest thing to do would be to read the code, in fact the fastest, easiest thing to do is probably for another lab in the same field to do an independent analysis of the data with their own code.