In a statement to Polifact today, NCDC made the following statement:
“… our algorithm is working as designed”
One wonders though, about these sorts of things that have been found wrong in their data file for USHCN, which is represented to the public as “high quality”.
Here are few other things that worked as designed:
The Tacoma Narrows Bridge (1940):
Early NASA Rockets (1950’s-60’s):
The Titanic (1912): On 14 April, the RMS Titanic, described by its builders as practically unsinkable, sinks after hitting an iceberg.
The de Havilland Comet (1952): Twenty-one of these commercial airliners were built.The Comet was involved in 26 hull-loss accidents, including 13 fatal crashes which resulted in 426 fatalities. After the conclusive evidence revealed in the inquiry that metal fatigue concentrated at the corners of the aircraft’s windows had caused the crashes, all aircraft were redesigned with rounded windows.
Mariner 1 (1962): The first US spacecraft dispatched to Venus drifts badly off course because of an error in its guidance system. The error is a small one — a wrong punctuation character (a hyphen) in a single line of code — but the course deviation is large. Mariner 1 ends up in the Atlantic Ocean after being destroyed by a range safety officer. It has been called “The most expensive hyphen in history”
The Mars Climate Orbiter (1998)
![marsClimateOrbiter[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/marsclimateorbiter1.jpg?quality=83)
The Mars Climate Orbiter crashed into the surface of the planet, because its orbit was too low.
The primary cause of this discrepancy was that one piece of ground software produced results in an “English system” unit, while a second system that used those results expected them to be in metric units. Software that calculated the total impulse produced by thruster firings calculated results in pound-seconds. The trajectory calculation used these results to correct the predicted position of the spacecraft for the effects of thruster firings. This software expected its inputs to be in newton-seconds.
The discrepancy between calculated and measured position, resulting in the discrepancy between desired and actual orbit insertion altitude, had been noticed earlier by at least two navigators, whose concerns were dismissed.
The NCDC Climate at a Glance plotter for the public (2014):
While being told that “all is well” and and that “our algorithm is working as designed”, it is easy to discover that if one tries to plot the temperature data for any city in the United States like Dallas Texas for example you get plots for high temperature, low temperature, and average temperature that are identical:
Try it yourself:
Go here:
Change settings to go to a statewide time series, pick a city, and what it does is and it gives you data where the min temp, avg temp and max temp that are the same. It is unknown if it is even the right data for the city.
h/t to WUWT readers Wyo_skeptic, Gary T., and Dr. Roy Spencer
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Would love to know what Harry’s readme file says these days. Must be hysterical.
davidmhoffer says:
July 1, 2014 at 9:30 pm
Aw, you left out the Hubble Telescope. I think it a most appropriate example for no other reason that every single component and sub-assembly worked exactly as designed. It was only the fully assembled device that failed to work properly.
i sense the same mind numbing denial of the obvious in this case. The algorithm no doubt did work exactly as designed. That by no means proves that the design achieved an output commensurate with actual results, and, as the trends above show, it is quite possible to have an algorithm that works as designed yet, as part of a larger system, like the Hubble Telescope, produces incorrect information that is wildly and completely obviously wrong. Sadly, a quick look at the original photo from Hubble was enough to convince a rank layman that something was wrong. I don’t think a quick look by the MSM will have the same effect.
————————————————————————————————————————————
On a 12.5 short ton, 14ft dia. telescope ground to an accuracy of 0.00000125″ the error was 0.00008″ due to a miscalculation of the effect of gravity. I am sure you could do better.
The Golden Rule of Metrology is
Your work will always be criticised by someone who has trouble measuring the height of his children.
“”””””…..Old44……”””””
“””””…..————————————————————————————————————————————
On a 12.5 short ton, 14ft dia. telescope ground to an accuracy of 0.00000125″ the error was 0.00008″ due to a miscalculation of the effect of gravity. I am sure you could do better…….”””””
Old44 might have pegged it correctly. I believe the error was something of that nature, that the PE mirror was tested at surface gravity, and someone forgot it would be operating in zero gravity (near enough)
I don’t recall, exactly whose error it was, but I’m under the impression that PE built it to exactly what they were given.
And for the life of me, I can’t convert all those zeros to some fraction of some wavelength, so I can’t verify (or falsify) Old44’s nummers..
It’s a shame it wasn’t feasible for astronauts to swap out the faux PE primary, for the EK jewel.
Something about momentum, or some such pestilence. Maybe, they should’ve asked McGiver, to figure out how to accomplish that switch.
“Our algorithm is working as designed….”
Check. http://www.gao.gov/key_issues/climate_change_funding_management/issue_summary
Keep the money flowing at all costs, folks.
So it was designed to be Ass Backward???
From ;NASA’s
The Hubble Telescope –
Optical Systems Failure Report
http://www.company7.com/c7news/19910003124_1991003124.pdf
Extracted from the Executive Summary
The Board’s investigation of the manufacture of the mirror proved that the mirror was made in
the wrong shape, being too much flattened away from the mirror’s center (a.
0.4-wave rms wavefront error at 632.8 nm). The error is ten times larger than the
specified tolerance.
&
The RNC [ Reflective Null Corrector ] was designed and built by the Perkin-Elmer Corporation for the HST Project.
This unit had been preserved by the manufacturer exactly as it was during the
manufacture of the mirror. When the Board measured the RNC, the lens was
incorrectly spaced from the mirrors. Calculations of the effect of such
displacement on the primary mirror show that the measured amount, 1.3 mm,
accounts in detail for the amount and character of the observed image blurring.
No verification of the reflective null corrector’s dimensions was carried out by
Perkin-Elmer after the original assembly. There were, however, clear indications
of the problem from auxiliary optical tests made at the time, the results of which
have been studied by the Board. A special optical unit called an inverse null
corrector, designed to mimic the reflection from a perfect primary mirror, was built
and used to align the apparatus; when so used, it clearly showed the error in the
reflective null corrector. A second null corrector, made only with lenses, was used
to measure the vertex radius of the finished primary mirror. It, too, clearly showed
the error in the primary mirror. Both indicators of error were discounted at the
time as being themselves flawed.
The Perkin-Elmer plan for fabricating the primary mirror placed complete
reliance on the reflective null corrector as the only test to be used in both
manufacturing and verifying the mirror’s surface with the required precision.
NASA understood and accepted this plan. This methodology should have alerted
NASA management to the fragility of the process and the possibility of gross error,
that is, a mistake in the process, and the need for continued care and
consideration of independent measurements.
The design of the telescope and the measuring instruments was performed well
by skilled optical scientists. However, the fabrication was the responsibility of the
Optical Operations Division at the Perkin-Elmer Corporation (P-E), which was
insulated from review or technical supervision. The P-E design scientists,
Management, and Technical Advisory Group, as well as NASA management and
NASA review activities, all failed to follow the fabrication process with reasonable
diligence and, according to testimony, were unaware that discrepant data existed,
although the data were of concern to some members of P-E’s Optical Operations
Division. Reliance on a single test method was a process which was clearly
vulnerable to simple error. Such errors had been seen in other telescope
programs, yet no independent tests were planned, although some simple tests to
protect against major error were considered and rejected. During the critical time
period, there was great concern about cost and schedule, which hrther inhibited
consideration of independent tests.
The most unfortunate aspect of this HST optical system failure, however, is that
the data revealing these errors were available from time to time in the fabrication
process, but were not recognized and fully investigated at the time. Reviews were
inadequate, both internally and externally, and the engineers and scientists who
were qualified to analyze the test data did not do so in sufficient detail.
Competitive, organizational, cost, and schedule pressures were all factors in
limiting full exposure of all the test information to qualified reviewers.
De Havilland Comet DH 106 production lists 117 airframes of all variants produced.
De Havilland Comet airliner crashes;
http://www.oocities.org/capecanaveral/lab/8803/fcometcr.htm#table2
20 crashes from June 53 to Jan 71 including;
3 Aircraft lost due to airframe fatigue and design faults .
2 Faulty airfoil leading edge design leading to loss of lift in too sharp a pull up during final phase of the take off.
2 instrument failures
1 hull loss from a wheels up landing due to inadequate pre landing checks by the crew, Air Traffic controllers in training.
1 bomb
11 pilot error
National Center for Data Control
Where’s Mosh to defend the indefensible?
***
John Hewitt says:
July 3, 2014 at 6:26 am
Where’s Mosh to defend the indefensible?
***
Conspiring w/Stokes.