[WikiEN-l] An example of a bad biography

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 12:20 AM, Philip Sandifer <snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>  I think the response is better summarized as "it is impossible to
>  reduce the error rate to 0 with a population of this size."
>  Accordingly, anecdotal evidence does not seem to me to be significant,
[snip]

There are two classes of errors that can show up in a production
process, random and systemic.   It is important to understand how each
class contributes to the overall error rate because the methods used
to address them are different.

Systemic errors can be eliminated. It doesn't matter if you are making
10 or 10 million things, the systemic part is equally eliminatble, and
the more things you make the greater the payoff of eliminating the
systemic error.

The random contribution can not be (except in so far as whatever isn't
yet done to reduce random errors can be regarded as a systemic error).

I realize the above definition is somewhat circular. But its important
distinction between systemic and random errors has nothing to do with
their frequency, but everything to do with whether they can be
controlled or not.

Once the systemic errors are gone there are only two efficient and
effective ways of handing the remaining random error.   You can ignore
it and suffer the consequences, or you can decide that it is
acceptable and test every single thing produced for it, fixing it when
you find it.    Sampled testing is never an effective solution to
random errors because if there is no systemic error your sample tells
you absolutely nothing about the rest of the set.

English Wikipedia is rife with errors of systemic class, things which
we could control/reduce, and I think you will agree with this even if
you and I do not agree on all of what those errors are or how to
resolve them.

These ought to be fixed, and the fact that fixing the things we can
control doesn't solve the things we can't is not a valid excuse not to
try.