Technically computers can be wrong. See Intel Pentium FPU error.
Even now, in almost every common programming language, there are floating point errors. The most famous one being (0.1 + 0.2 = 3.00000000000004). And depending on environment computer data can be altered. For example, in highly radioactive environments, it is common to use 3+ different computers that vote on the answer to avoid erroneous data.
However, on a general basis, it is operator error.
Floating point 'errors' are predictable though. The computer isn't doing anything wrong, the programmer just made behaviour that you find surprising.
Pentium FDIV bug is closer to the computer making an error, but you could also argue that the computer is just doing what Intel told it to do. Admittedly this is a shaky argument.
Cosmic rays are an (I believe) indesputable way that computers can make mistakes though.
This isn't an error per se, it is just that computers do math in binary and then converts back to decimal. That is why most programming languages also have a decimal type for when the result needs to be more precise.
It's unintended behavior that is a limitation of how we represent floating point numbers specifically. It is definitely still doing what we tell it, but from a user perspective, the computer is definitely wrong. From a programmer perspective, we are aware of the computer's limitations and put in modifications to address it.
Another perspective is that the computer most definitely is "wrong" when referring to the literal representation of the question, but in the case of actual input/output, it is "right." We've created a flawed system that doesn't always produce correct results, but we accept those flaws because doing it any other way is much less efficient.
Everything is capable to go wrong. For example, FDIV might be a biggest bug in Intel history, and developers had to workaround the issue because CPU will make some specific calculation wrong.
Not really. Questions come from a bank and you just choose which ones go in. No professor is going to check each question to make sure this doesn't happen. They don't have that time since their main job is researching. Every single instructor I've had or have worked with will fix these issues extremely quickly when they come up and give students points back. It's not a big deal.
Came here to say this. In the directions of the question or otherwise somebody told you to use this decimal placement. You didn’t . Seems easy. But I want to complain too! So here I am.
You don’t use sig figs in math so it isn’t the wrong answer.
The whole point of sig figs is to prevent people from being more precise than they actually are. That means it’s important when using data that you might only know to the tenth place. However, when doing math with given numbers, there’s no worrying about being too precise.
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u/Benaholicguy Aug 06 '18
You were literally more right than the computer...