Sunday, November 6, 2011

"Whilst the engine runs the people must work...

...men, women and children yoked together with iron and steam. The animal machine - breakable in the best case is chained fast to the iron machine, which knows no suffering and no weariness." -- mistakenly attributed to James Phillip Kay

"If algebraical symbols lead to more accurate results, no one can rightly object to their use. In this case they lend an appearance of definiteness to conclusions whose accuracy is conditioned by the assumptions from which they proceed; assumptions which are often themselves "unverified probabilities," while the very exactness of the equation form is a temptation to choose assumptions that are far removed from life but will fit the Procrustean formula." -- John Maurice Clark, 1913

1 comment:

  1. Shorter Clark: "Garbage in; garbage out."

    Cheers!
    JzB the procrustean trombonist

    ReplyDelete

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