[SystemSafety] Software reliability (or whatever you would prefer to call it)

[Yiannis I Papadopoulos]

Hi David! Thanks for the amusing post :)

"I hate to destroy your comfortable illusion, but a long time ago
(in a galaxy quite close to where you live) the ERNIE machine that
decided who won the weekly and monthly premium bond draw in the UK
used the random noise in a particular kind of diode as the source for
the random numbers. I believe the noise is a quantum effect."

Does this quantum effect show that there is "randomness" in the world? If quantum phenomena caused real randomness then the world would be fairly unpredictable. But still, the laws of physics are pretty deterministic and the macro-world is pretty predictable.

On a more mundane level, unfortunately I have not seen yet much "real randomness" when I program, analyse, test and verify code. For example I have never seen an "if" mutating into a "for" or a stamement that is either an "if" or a "for"  depending on the observer :). Admittedly it would have been fun, but never happened nevertheless.

In any case, if you  really believe that quantum mechanics introduces real randomness in the macrocosm, and has impact on this discussion, then I am really looking forward to reading your paper about how to incorporate quantum mechanics in the assessment and verification of systems and software (happy to coauthor too :)

Thanks and have a good day! :)
 
Yiannis

-----Original Message-----
From: David Haworth [mailto:david.haworth at elektrobit.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2015 11:42 AM
To: Yiannis I Papadopoulos
Cc: Nick Tudor; systemsafety at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de
Subject: Re: [SystemSafety] Software reliability (or whatever you would prefer to call it)

Hi Yiannis,

>    (... no Heisenberg please ... if quantum mechanics introduced any
>    real randomness in the world as we know it, we would be in real trouble
>    :)

I hate to destroy your comfortable illusion, but a long time ago
(in a galaxy quite close to where you live) the ERNIE machine that
decided who won the weekly and monthly premium bond draw in the UK
used the random noise in a particular kind of diode as the source for
the random numbers. I believe the noise is a quantum effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premium_Bond#ERNIE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_random_number_generator

I also spent many "happy" hours analysing why a range of radiation
monitors produced by the company I then worked for reported that
they had failed occasionally. The answer was that the tiny scrap
of radioactive material that was built into the Geiger tube in
the equipment, that was intended to provide at least one measurable
decay event every 3 seconds or so would in reality sometimes not
produce anything for 10 seconds or more. What's more, the calculations
that we made and the simulations that we ran correlated with the observed
phenomenon remarkably accurately.

So in some sense, the randomness introduced by quantum mechanics had a
direct effect on my own experience. And quite likely on all those who
have won prizes in the premium bond draw :-)

Dave

On 2015-03-10 10:37:33 +0000, Yiannis I Papadopoulos wrote:
>    " Software essentially boils down to a string of one's and nought's.
>    Given the same inputs (and that always comes from the chaotic
>    environment) then the output will always be the same.  It therefore
>    makes no sense to talk about 'software reliability' "
> 
> 
>    The premise is true but does the conclusion follow?
> 
> 
>    Take the example of throwing a dice.
> 
> 
>    If you know everything about the dice and its environment and apply the
>    laws of physics you can determine the outcome. You can be god,
>    replicate the exact conditions and you will get the same outcome every
>    time (... no Heisenberg please ... if quantum mechanics introduced any
>    real randomness in the world as we know it, we would be in real trouble
>    :)
> 
> 
>    So, what is the purpose then of talking about randomness,  probability
>    and statistics to describe such phenomena? I think the answer is that
>    it is often the best, sometimes the only way, to reason about complex
>    deterministic processes. It is done all the time in science, why not in
>    software?
> 
> 
>    --
> 
>    Yiannis Papadopoulos
> 
>    http://www2.hull.ac.uk/science/computer_science/our_staff/staff_profile
>    s/yiannis_papadopoulos.aspx

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