[SystemSafety] Fetzer

[Derek M Jones]

Martyn,

> Why is it that people (standards committees, for example) are happy to
> support unscientific claims based on testing and process conformance but
> reject the need for scientific claims based on mathematical proof?
Mathematical proofs contain mistakes, because people make mistakes
when writing then, just like writing code.

Mistakes may be made in mapping the world into a mathematical model,
i.e., important aspects of reality are abstracted away or ignored.

Mistakes are made in writing the proof.

Mistakes are made in proving the proof.

Mistakes are made in interpreting what a proof means.

-- 
Derek M. Jones           Software analysis
tel: +44 (0)1252 520667  blog:shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com