Bad Data
Bad Data
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不良数据
DOI：
10.1093/oso/9780198824305.003.0006
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发表时间：
2018
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Gary Smith
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Gary Smith
1971年我刚开始教经济学的时候，我妻子的祖父（“Popsie”）知道我的博士学位。这篇论文使用耶鲁大学的大型计算机来估算一个极其复杂的经济模型。Popsie几十年来一直成功地买卖股票。他甚至在经纪人的办公室里有自己的办公桌，在那里他可以交易八卦和股票。尽管如此，他还是想从一个21岁的孩子那里得到建议，这个孩子没有钱，一生中从未买过一股股票--我--因为我和电脑打交道。“问问电脑它对斯伦贝谢的看法。”“问问电脑它对通用电气的看法。”自从100多年前查尔斯·巴贝奇发明了第一台计算机以来，这种天真的信念就一直存在。在十几岁的时候，伟大的法国数学家布莱斯·帕斯卡（Blaise Pascal）建造了一台名为Arithmetique的机械计算器，以帮助他的父亲，一位法国税务员。算术工具是一个盒子，盒子里有一个可见的刻度盘，刻度盘连接着隐藏在盒子里的齿轮。每一个刻度盘都有十个数字，分别标为0到9。当1秒刻度盘从9到0移动时，10秒刻度盘向上移动一个刻度;当10秒刻度盘从9到0移动时，100秒刻度盘向上移动一个刻度;以此类推。Aritmatique可以做加法和减法，但刻度盘必须用手转动。巴贝奇意识到，他可以将复杂的公式转换成简单的加减运算，并使运算自动化，这样机械计算机每次都能完美地完成计算，从而消除了人为错误。巴贝奇的第一个设计被称为差分机，这是一个由黄铜和铁制成的蒸汽动力庞然大物，高8英尺，重15吨，有25，000个零件。差分机可以进行长达20位小数的计算，并可以打印格式化的结果表。经过十年的设计修补，巴贝奇开始计划一个更强大的计算器，他称之为分析引擎。这种设计有超过50，000个组件，使用穿孔卡输入指令和数据，并可以存储多达1000个50位数的数字。
When I first started teaching economics in 1971, my wife’s grandfather (“Popsie”) knew that my Ph.D. thesis used Yale’s big computer to estimate an extremely complicated economic model. Popsie had bought and sold stocks successfully for decades. He even had his own desk at his broker’s office where he could trade gossip and stocks. Nonetheless, he wanted advice from a 21-year-old kid who had no money and had never bought a single share of stock in his life—me—because I worked with computers. “Ask the computer what it thinks of Schlumberger.” “Ask the computer what it thinks of GE.” This naive belief that computers are infallible has been around ever since the first computer was invented more than 100 years ago by Charles Babbage. While a teenager, the great French mathematician Blaise Pascal built a mechanical calculator called the Arithmetique to help his father, a French tax collector. The Arithmetique was a box with visible dials connected to gears hidden inside the box. Each dial had ten digits labeled 0 through 9.When the dial for the 1s column moved from 9 to 0, the dial for the 10s column moved up 1 notch; when the dial for the 10s column moved from9 to 0, the dial for the 100s column moved up 1 notch; and so on. The Aritmatique could do addition and subtraction, but the dials had to be turned by hand. Babbage realized that he could convert complex formulas into simple addition-and-subtraction calculations and automate the calculations, so that a mechanical computer would do the calculations perfectly every time, thereby eliminating human error. Babbage’s first design was called the Difference Engine, a steam powered behemoth made of brass and iron that was 8 feet tall, weighed 15 tons, had 25,000 parts. The Difference Engine could make calculations up to 20 decimals long and it could print formatted tables of results. After a decade tinkering with the design, Babbage began working on plans for a more powerful calculator he called the Analytical Engine. This design had more than 50,000 components, used perforated cards to input instructions and data, and could store up to one thousand 50-digit numbers.