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Error
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The word error has different meanings and usages relative to how it is conceptually applied. The concrete meaning of the Latin word error means "wandering" or "straying". To the contrary of an illusion, an error or a mistake can sometimes be dispelled through knowledge (knowing that one is looking at a mirage and not at real water doesn't make the mirage disappear).
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Encyclopedia
The word error has different meanings and usages relative to how it is conceptually applied. The concrete meaning of the Latin word error means "wandering" or "straying". To the contrary of an illusion, an error or a mistake can sometimes be dispelled through knowledge (knowing that one is looking at a mirage and not at real water doesn't make the mirage disappear). However, some errors can occur even when individuals have the required knowledge to perform a task correctly. Examples include forgetting to collect your change after buying chocolate from a vending machine, forgetting the original document after making photocopies, and forgetting to turn the gas off after cooking a meal. These slip errors can occur when an individual is distracted by something else.
Human behavior
One reference differentiates between "error" and "mistake" as follows:An ‘error' is a deviation from accuracy or correctness. A ‘mistake' is an error caused by a fault: the fault being misjudgment, carelessness, or forgetfulness. Now, say that I run a stop sign because I was in a hurry, and wasn't concentrating, and the police stop me, that is a mistake. If, however, I try to park in an area with conflicting signs, and I get a ticket because I was incorrect on my interpretation of what the signs meant, that would be an error. The first time it would be an error. The second time it would be a mistake since I should have known better.
In human behavior the norms or expectations for behavior or its consequences can be derived from the intention of the actor or from the expectations of other individuals or of a social grouping or from social norms. (See deviance.) Gaffes and faux pas can be labels for certain instances of this kind of error. More serious departures from social norms carry labels such as misbehavior and labels from the legal system, such as misdemeanor and crime. Departures from norms connected to religion can have other labels, such as sin.
Oral and written language
An individual language user's deviations from standard language norms in grammar, syntax, pronunciation and punctuation are sometimes referred to as errors. However in light of the role of language usage in everyday social class distinctions, many feel that linguistics should be descriptive rather than prescriptive to avoid reinforcing dominant class value judgments about what linguistic forms should and should not be used. See also Error analysis.
Gaffe
A gaffe is a verbal mistake, usually made in a social environment. The mistake may come from saying something that is true, but inappropriate. It may also be an erroneous attempt to reveal a truth. Finally, gaffes can be malapropisms, grammatical errors or other verbal and gestural weaknesses or revelations through body language.
Actually revealing factual or social truth through words or body language, however, can commonly result in embarrassment or, when the gaffe has negative connotations, friction between people involved.
A grammatical or literary error is more embarrassing in the company of intellectuals, professors or serious students, just as errors of science can be embarrassing among scientists or doctors.
The protagonist attorney in the film Liar Liar plays on the nature of truth revelation, however, and its ambiguous or unexpected consequences.
As used by some journalists, particularly sportswriters, "gaffe" becomes an imagined synonym for any kind of mistake, e.g., a dropped ball by a player in a baseball game. Philosophers and psychologists interested in the nature of the gaffe include Freud and Gilles Deleuze. Deleuze, in his Logic of Sense, places the gaffe in a developmental process that can culminate in stuttering.
Medicine
See medical error for a description of error in medicine.
Statistics
In statistics, an error is not a "mistake" but is a difference between a computed, estimated, or measured value and the true, specified, or theoretically correct value.
Errors
error is a difference between the desired and actual performance or behavior of a system or object.
(In computational mechanics, when solving a system such as Ax=b there is a distinction between the
"error" — the inaccuracy in x — and residual—the inaccuracy in Ax.)
Engineers often seek to design systems in such a way as to mitigate or preferably avoid the effects of error, whether unintentional or not.
One type of error is human error which includes cognitive bias. Human factors engineering is often applied to designs in an attempt to minimize this type of error by making systems more forgiving or error-tolerant.
Errors in a system can also be latent design errors that may go unnoticed for years, until the right set of circumstances arises that cause them to become active. See also Observational error.
Cybernetics
The word cybernetics stems from the Greek ??ße???t?? (kybernetes, steersman, governor, pilot, or rudder — the same root as government). In applying corrections to the trajectory or course being steered Cybernetics can be seen as the most general approach to error and its correction for the achievement of any goal. The term was suggested by Norbert Wiener to describe a new science of control and information in the animal and the machine. Wiener's early work was on noise.
The cybernetician Gordon Pask held that the error that drives a servomechanism can be seen as a difference between a pair of analogous concepts (in a servomechanism, the current state and the goal state). Later he suggested error can also be seen as an innovation or a contradiction depending on the context and perspective of interacting (observer) participants. The founder of Management cybernetics, Stafford Beer, applied these ideas most notably in his Viable System Model.
Biology
In biology, an error is said to occur when perfect fidelity is lost in the copying of information. For example, in an asexually reproducing species, an error (or mutation) has occurred for each DNA nucleotide that differs between the child and the parent. Errors in this sense are not judged as "good" or "bad", although an error may make an organism either more or less adapted to its environment.
Baseball
In baseball, an error is judged by the official scorer when a runner advances a base because of a fielding mistake, and perfect play would have prevented the advancement, and the mistake was physical. Mental misjudgments are not errors. Failing to get more than one out on a given play is not an error. Application of this rule is necessarily subjective. See error (baseball).
Philately
In philately, an error refers to a postage stamp or piece of postal stationery that exhibits a printing or production mistake that differentiates it from a normal specimen or from the intended result. Examples are stamps printed in the wrong color or missing one or more colors, printed with a vignette inverted in relation to its frame, produced without any perforations on one or more sides when the normal stamps are perforated, or printed on the wrong type of paper. Legitimate errors must always be produced and sold unintentionally. Such errors may or may not be scarce or rare. A design error may refer to a mistake in the design of the stamp, such as a mislabeled subject, even if there are no printing or production mistakes.
Governmental policy
Within United States government intelligence agencies, such as Central Intelligence Agency agencies, error refers to intelligence error, as previous assumptions that used to exist at a senior intelligence level within senior intelligence agencies, but has since been disproven, and is sometimes eventually listed as unclassified, and therefore more available to the American public and citizenry of the United States. The Freedom of information act provides American citizenry with a means to read intelligence reports that were mired in error. Per United States Central Intelligence Agency's website (as of August, 2008), intelligence error is described as:
"Intelligence errors are factual inaccuracies in analysis resulting from poor or missing data; intelligence failure is systemic organizational surprise resulting from incorrect, missing, discarded, or inadequate hypotheses."
Numismatics
In numismatics, an error refers to a coin or medal that has a minting mistake, similar to errors found in philately. Because the U.S. Bureau of the Mint keeps a careful eye on all potential errors, errors on U.S. coins are very few and usually very scarce. Examples of numismatic errors: extra metal attached to a coin, a clipped coin caused by the coin stamp machine stamping a second coin too early, double stamping of a coin. A coin that has been overdated, eg: 1942/41, is considered an error.
Error correction
Norman (1986, 1988) argued that because error is inevitable, ‘designers’ should minimize the causes of error, make it possible to undo erroneous actions and make it easier to discover and correct errors. Edmondson’s research focuses on pinpointing specific conditions on group levels which can influence the degree of errors caught and corrected.
Although her study was in a specific sector (medicine) some of her conditions can be generalized:
a) Unit Leader behaviours.
b) Unit performance outcomes
c) Unit shared beliefs.
Unit leader behaviours are crucial in creating a culture in which openness of discussing errors, through their open and stimulating behaviour, are used as an example for the others.
The unit performance outcomes consist of factors such as quality of interpersonal relations, unit performance and detected error rates. The leader behaviour and the performance outcomes result in shared beliefs. The shared beliefs of error report that first of all, everybody should accept that making mistakes is normal and that it will not be used against one (Helmreich, 1988).
Further, the more errors are reported and discussed, the bigger the incentive should be to report and solve other errors.
Jones (1999) adds that technocratic movements have a positive influence on error correction due improved communication. Technological improvements stimulate collaborate thinking and striving for optimalization of systems. Through this, error correction is maximalized. Tsuvijek (1988) implies how technology on one hand can improve error correction, but on the other hand cause more errors due to decreased human intervention.
In mathematics, computer science, telecommunication, and information theory, error correction has a very precise meaning discussed in the article about error detection and correction.
See also
Psychology of error
Error in reasoning
Errors in language
Error diagnosis and prevention
Production quality terminology
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