GIGO for the 21st Century

We of a certain age will remember Garbage In, Garbage Out (GIGO) a crucial reminder in the early days of electronic computers that the machine’s results depend on it’s inputs. Here’s the equivalent for the 21^st century, from a Substack columnist:

“The quality of your outputs can only ever reach the ceiling of your inputs.”
--Jasmine Sun

Kind of like significant digits, which I learned in high school. "You result can only have as many places to the right of the decimal as your least accurate measurement." Any more places, and you're just fooling yourself.

Comments

[Clark Smith]

While I agree with this, enologist Dr. Harold Berg at UC Davis always held that whatever long string of digits you came up with was still your best estimate and should never be trucated or rounded. Berg was a dick, but his logic on this is hard to argue with.