Is is possible for a computer to make an error, or is it always human induced?

Think hard. Discuss.

After all humans invented computers.

There is an important algorithm that all computers will follow.

GIGO

It stands for:

Garbage In = Garbage Out

Computer makes what they are instructed to do.
If there is a flaw in the base logic, there will be a flaw in the result.

And as Chris stated, you can only expect correct results if you feed the computer valid datas.

So both the operations and the informations have to be "clean" for a computer to do a correct work.

Hey Friends,

I don't follow in your GIGO concept. Now, you can convert your garbage into the utilities and can save some bugs. There are so many computer services sites which can help you. If you need to know about it then please ping me.

Thanks,
James

Or maybe not.

I think you have just ably demonstrated why nobody should employ your "help"

Why ? Did I miss something?

Computers can make errors but the percentage is very small.

Errors are mainly made human. If human input wrong input/logic the outcome will be incorrect.

Computer itself does not do any error or mistake but it may commit any error due to any problem in its hardware or software and it is quite possible that the problem in hardware or software may occur because of any person therefore it can be said that mostly errors in work are due to human but up to little extent due to computer.

Computer does make mistakes, too. As we all known that there were always bugs and defects from all kinds of software and hardware. So, we need to update software and drivers of hardware.

Error. Error for what?
Are you working on the some calculation I wonder?

hardware failure (eg memory) can cause computer error.

Originally Posted by DynamicFlooder

Is is possible for a computer to make an error, or is it always human induced?

Think hard. Discuss.

After all humans invented computers.

it is possible for computers to make errors.it does not have to be neccessarily human induced.the computer is itself made by us humans.it just delivers what it is fed with.theres a certain flow according to which the computer operates.even if there is a slight error then there are chances of everything else going wrong.

Hey Friends,

Humans are always going to make errors if the situation conspires against them and especially if computer interfaces are badly designed. In many cases, the critical component of the computer is its interface. Users/operators generally do not understand the computer's inner world of bits, bytes, files, ram, etc.

Thanks,
<removed>

I remember Intel had to recall some CPUs (long time ago) because CPUs performed some math tasks wrong. So yes, sometimes it's possible for computer to make errors.

Yep, the original Pentium chips had a Floating Point Processor "bug" (1994)

http://ethics.csc.ncsu.edu/risks/rel...tium/study.php

I wonder if the term 'bug' in computer lingo will ever be called something different...I'm tired of hearing 'bug'...Even though, if I remember correctly, someone once had a real bug on their computer and because it caused a problem, it was called a virus, or whatever...I remember that one pretty good.

Computer are only following the input made by humans, as for

The only thing they do is, to give an accurate output as design by humans.

The term "bug" came about from Harvard in 1947 so it might be with us for a few more years yet.