this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2024
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I did advanced mathematics and chose physics as one of my elective subjects in school. Nowadays, I do a lot of work based around analytics and forecasting.
"We need to find the average of this."
"That's easy. I'll do some more advanced stuff to really dial in the accuracy."
"Awesome. What's the timeframe?"
looks at million row dataset "To find the average? Like a month. Some of these numbers are mispelled words... Why are all these blank?"
"Oh, you'll have to read this 45 page document that outlines the default values."
And that's how roffice maths works. Lots and lots of if conditions, query merges, and meetings with other teams trying to understand why they entered in the thing they entered. By the time the data wrangling phase is complete, you give zero fucks about doing more than supplying the average.
Yup this is every job now. Wrangling numbers. The actual job or calculation could be done in days if less. But dealing with dirty information and playing detective which isnt even part of it is the sink hole of every job right now.
Lol, I have still written python scripts to deal with them all.
I miss those days...
Is this why chatgpt has a chance at optimizing work? Because it will filter out boring mistakes for you
Until it introduces a bunch of mistakes of its own. AI as a test has failed in several industries before now. It’s been around much longer than you’d think and has been tested in the BG for a lonnng time with much fail to the result of disgust if you even bring it up. It’s nothing more than a novelty in writing that doesn’t require the need to run on tight, non rational numbers. Something of which no binary based, household (and most industry) computer is capable of.
Look up the Ariane 5 rocket disaster. It is the summary of floating point error that can result in disaster. This is the limitation that is present in all standard computers you’d be accessing today since the 1930’s.
(Also referred to as round off errors or truncation errors in avionics because of how common irrational numbers are in spatial navigation.)