Or so you might think NASA is saying, after a 13 year old kid showed they'd miscalculated the odds of an asteroid hitting earth by a factor of 3.
More like this
Then Corn decides to get mean about it:
This year's issue of the Lund Archaeological Review reached me last week. It's the volume for 2005-2006, and most of the papers are dated 2005. Such a delay is no big deal in archaeology: our knowledge growth doesn't progress at the rate typical of the natural sciences.
It's dyscalculia.
The curse of math instructors everywhere.
I'm undoubtedly a big proponent of changing our actions to combat global warming, but you can bet I'm more than wary of ideas to experiment with our home Terra.
3? From one in 45.000 to one in 450 is factor of 100, isn't it?
10^3 is a factor of three, I thought. Or is that an order of magnitude?
It's an order of magnitude, but don't worry, it's only a small error.
NASA shouldn't worry either, well until they start finding us measuring their errors in Dembskis.
And 10^2 = 100. So 2 orders of magnitude or a factor fo 100. Or was this a SIWOTI trap?
NASA was right, the boy was wrong. The story has been misreported: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/16/esa_german_schoolboy_apophis_de…
OK, so the lessons to be learned here are:
1. Wilkins is functionally innumerate
2. Wilkins can't tell an order of magnitude from a hole in the ground
3. Wilkins is a credulous fool
I think we'll leave this thread then.
I'm not surprised to hear this was wrong. My BS detector was going crazy when I read that article yesterday, but I never bothered to check for any corrections because I just thought it was bunk anyway. Thanks for the link Daniele.
I hope that the 13-year-old boy isn't too bummed about his better chance of living longer than 2036.
In science, it seems much safer to be a skeptic. The problem though, is that sneering skeptics don't contribute much in the way of significant new discoveries. That requires an unreasonable, creative person. But if you're a truly creative person, you're probably better off sticking with art or engineering anyway - more degrees of freedom there.
Yup, the media got it wrong -- AGAIN.
The boy's sums are wrong, and neither NASA nor ESA ever endorsed the boy's math, or his conclusions.
Bravo for the kid for trying, boo hiss for the German media and AFP newswire running with an inaccurate story.
"...well until they start finding us measuring their errors in Dembskis."
That actually has a nice ring to it. "Are those error bars for SDs, SEMs or Dembskis?"
Anyway, it's a testament to the fact that we boffins are about as popular as a fart in a spacesuit these days that Joe Public would sooner take the word of a child over that of an expert.
Not a good state of affairs by any means.
To quote Dirty Harry, "A man should know his limitations."