Timeline for "UK schoolboy corrects Nasa data error" - what precisely was the "error"?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
11 events
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| Jun 17, 2020 at 8:54 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
Commonmark migration
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| May 24, 2018 at 9:39 | comment | added | uhoh | @Hobbes I wonder if this is similar or even identical: gizmodo.com/… | |
| Mar 28, 2017 at 19:08 | comment | added | Steve | Magic number | |
| Mar 27, 2017 at 11:26 | comment | added | Hobbes | According to the Wikipedia article for 'sentinel value', those are used as an 'end of data' signal. That's close, but not quite what happens here. | |
| Mar 26, 2017 at 13:48 | comment | added | longneck | "There's a name for this phenomenon", sentinel values. | |
| Mar 26, 2017 at 13:36 | comment | added | Daniel Jour |
Note that the impact does not only depend on the range of usually expected values. If you only ever expected non negative values and suddenly get a -1 then this can screw calculations (if not guarded correctly) pretty much (think what happens to log .. )
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| Mar 26, 2017 at 11:42 | comment | added | uhoh | I'm going to conclude personally that the BBC's choice of words "...a piece of Nasa's top space research is flawed." are overstating the situation somewhat, actually more than somewhat. | |
| Mar 26, 2017 at 11:40 | vote | accept | uhoh | ||
| Mar 26, 2017 at 11:40 | comment | added | uhoh | Thanks for the thorough answer. A low mass dosimeter, read out frequently, might read an occasional zero, and if there is any offset at all, calibration or otherwise, occasional negative numbers are possible, and of course the -1 being a flag is certainly reasonable too. I can't read the article yet, but in the preview of the figures I see a map of the ISS orbit and variations in dose resolved within a single orbit. Typically personal dosimeters are read out daily, or even once a week, and other types of radiation monitors are used for spatial or temporal mapping and/or safety alarms. | |
| Mar 26, 2017 at 11:31 | history | edited | Hobbes | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 270 characters in body
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| Mar 26, 2017 at 11:26 | history | answered | Hobbes | CC BY-SA 3.0 |