Quote: errors occur frequently in numeric tables; corrections to the Nautical Almanac were themselves in error

Quotation

The great importance of having accurate Tables is admitted by all who understand their uses; but the multitude of errors really occurring is comparatively little known. ... [p. 70] In 1828 I lent the Government an original MS. of the table of Logarithmic Sines, Cosines, &c., computed to every second of the quadrant, in order that they might have it compared with Taylor's Logarithms ... Nineteen errors were thus detected, and a list of these errata was published in the Nautical Almanac for 1832 ... An error being detected in one of these errata, in the following Nautical Almanac we find an Erratum of the errata in N. Alm. 1932 ... But in this very erratum of the second order a new mistake was introduced larger than any of the original mistakes. ... [Similar problems happened with Hansen's "Tables of the Moon"]   Google-1   Google-2

Published before 1923

Related Topics

Topic: bugs (65 items)
Topic: numerical error (19 items)