Garbage In, Garbage Out (abbreviated to GIGO) is an aphorism in the field of computer science. It refers to the fact that computers, unlike humans, will unquestioningly process the most nonsensical of input data and produce nonsensical output. It was most popular in the early days of computing, but has fallen out of use as programs have become more sophisticated and now usually have checks built in to reject improper input. Wikibooks Wikiversity has more about this subject: School of Computer Science Open Directory Project: Computer Science Downloadable Science and Computer Science books Collection of Computer Science Bibliographies Belief that title science in computer science is inappropriate Categories: Computer science ... Jump to: navigation, search A computer is a device or machine for processing information from data according to a program — a compiled list of instructions. ... Jump to: navigation, search DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa) was established in 2002 by Bono (Paul Hewson) of the Rock band U2, and Bobby Shiver, along with activists from the Jubilee 2000 Drop the Debt Campaign, as an organisaton focused on Justice, not charity. ...

GIGO is usually said in response to users who complain that a program did not "do the right thing" when given imperfect input. It is also commonly used to describe failures in human decision making due to faulty, incomplete, or imprecise data. For example, a badly written TeX document will look bad because the user did not correctly typeset the TeX source properly. This instance of GIGO could be described in a similar vein to WYSIWYG - what you see is what you get. Jump to: navigation, search The TeX mascot, by Duane Bibby TEX, written as TeX in plain text, is a typesetting system created by Donald Knuth. ... Jump to: navigation, search This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...

Another, more recent, meaning of GIGO is Garbage In, Gospel Out. This phrase is a sardonic comment on the human tendency to accept the results from computer systems with unquestioning faith. An example of this blind-faith GIGO mentality is to believe that your work, stored in a computer, will be there whenever you need it even though you never perform data backup or virus scan. Backup in computer engineering refers to the copying of data for the purpose of having an additional copy of an original source. ... Anti-virus software consists of computer programs that attempt to identify, thwart and eliminate computer viruses and other malicious software (malware). ...

See also

• KIBO
• FUBAR

KIBO is an acronym for Knowledge In, Bullshit Out. ... SNAFU is an acronym meaning things are in a mess - as normal. ...

References