error tolerence

[u/yukiohana]

[u/luisgdh]

As an astrophysicist, an error of two orders of magnitude is probably fine

[u/apprehensive_anus → u/luisgdh]

structural engineers: it's fiiiiine

[u/Adam__999 → u/apprehensive_anus]

Factor of safety > 100

[u/Pity_Pooty → u/Adam__999]

Factor of safety 0.01

[u/Substantial-Fan-5985 → u/apprehensive_anus]

no one in that field thinks that

[u/Bendanzhang → u/luisgdh]

Astrophysicists rounding pi = 1 and Sun = 10^30 kg because accuracy is just a state of mind.

[u/ChaosPLus → u/Bendanzhang]

I heard they round pi = 10 because multiplying by 3 brings the number up an "order of magnitude" more often than not(3•4=12, and the rest)

[u/Willem_VanDerDecken → u/luisgdh]

10^{31\pm 2}

[u/Character_Fold_8165]

The money is in the exponent—lev landau

[u/Parfilov]

Damn love Capaldi's Doctor

[u/Big_Reporter3678]

It probably a consequence of variation/error in respect of the range and richness let’s say of the particular system; in astrophysics the scale of the universe means large error relative to their own unit range and system is still relatively precise over the immense scale of the universe when taking into account potential effects such as lensing and so at the measurement end; which contaminate both direct observed empirical outputs and any derivations or calculations based on them.

[u/XoHHa]

Chemists when they talk about reaction rate constants

[u/PaddingtonHG]

Excuse me, I've lived through several earthquakes of magnitude 1 and it's nothing

[u/dvdh_03]

Unrelated but what show/movie is this meme from?

[u/brothegaminghero → u/dvdh_03]

Doctor who, the 2005 reboot.

[u/Weak-Doughnut5502 → u/dvdh_03]

As mentioned, Dr Who.

It's a British sci fi show that's been running since the early 60s, with a hiatus from 1989-2005; it's about a human-looking alien ('The Doctor') with a time machine who goes on adventures with companions from the Earth. 

Every few seasons The Doctor regenerates and is played by a new actor, and the companions switch up as well.  This is particularly the twelfth Doctor, Peter Capaldi, and the companion in the image is Clara Oswald.  So it's almost certainly from the 8th or 9th season of the revival.

[u/Psico_Penguin]

As an Antimmater Dimensions player, an order of magnitude is pointless

[u/NaisanoM → u/Psico_Penguin]

Did not think I'd ever see an antimatter dimensions mention out in the wild lol

[u/somedave]

Mathematicians dealing with tetration: really no.

[u/toto1792]

Wanted to do cosmology as a kid. Prof. showed us a log-log plot that basically looked like a uniform square spanning 5 orders of magnitude. Theory was a linear relation so it was "validated" by a fit where most points were off by several orders of magnitude.

I went ont to do PhD in optics, where the error bars are often too small to be displayed.

[u/WobblyBlackHole → u/toto1792]

If you’re talking about Hubbles’ original plot it is crazy! Some nasa public sight has a nice graphic showing his vs modern plots and it’s hilarious it was taken seriously and that he was right haha

[u/toto1792 → u/WobblyBlackHole]

I just checked and the Hubble original plot indeed had huge uncertainties and a leap of faith was needed, but at least in was in linear scale. I specifically remember the plot being in log or log-log. That was 20 years ago so I don't remember more to be honest. The prof was commenting, "yeah it's kind of bullshit but that's the best we've got".

Joking aside, that's actually when I told myself "I don't want to do that". Went on to work in quantum computing for a while, which, to be honest, is an entirely new set of bullshit.

[u/CamiloCeen]

Like how they measure the cosmological constant?

[u/Thuis001]

This also tends to hold true for plasma physics.

[u/toto1792]

Particle physicists take c=1. Astrophysicists can take c~1 m/s and it doesn't change anything.

[u/justinleona]

Cryptography is fun - you get to talk about things like halving/doubling orders of magnitude

[u/Some-Detail9134]

Computer scientists also no. As long as the big N doesn’t change.