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Fault tolerance, randomness and pattern

In this chapter I will delve into what good, imperfect management means. It absolutely does not mean being satisfied too easily. It does mean striving hard to make the most of what you have, calibrating and reviewing and above all dealing credibly with the real world, a world in part always unknowable, ungraspable, unclear, unhelpful and chaotic.

Living with imperfection

One of the great objectives of 21st-century engineering science is to create machines and computers which are ‘fault tolerant’. This means that they are able to cope with mis-programming, defective instructions or circumstances that don’t exactly fit the preordained bill. The key, though, is that having recognised the fault, the ...

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