book cover

Principles
(Section 7.5 of
Programming Pearls)

When you use back-of-the-envelope calculations, be sure to recall Einstein's famous advice.

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.
We know that simple calculations aren't too simple by including safety factors to compensate for our mistakes in estimating parameters and our ignorance of the problem at hand.

Next: Section 7.6. Problems.

Copyright © 1999 Lucent Technologies. All rights reserved. Mon 9 Aug 1999