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Encyclopedia > Static analysis
Mapping the growth in number of blades on safety razors, deliberately absurd static projection predicts that they will reach infinity by 2015

Static analysis, static projection, and static scoring are pejorative terms for statistical analyses which take existing trends and project them into the future too simplistically, or beyond what is possible to predict in any fashion, producing often wildly unrealistic results. Image File history File links Broom_icon. ... Static analysis is the term applied to the analysis of computer software that is performed without actually executing programs built from that software (analysis performed on executing programs is known as dynamic analysis). ... Image File history File links Infini-T.jpg‎ Summary Analyzing trends using the method applied to global warming and population growth, safety razors should have infinite blades by 2015 Licensing File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Image File history File links Infini-T.jpg‎ Summary Analyzing trends using the method applied to global warming and population growth, safety razors should have infinite blades by 2015 Licensing File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... A word or phrase is pejorative if it implies contempt or disapproval. ...


Its opposite, dynamic analysis or dynamic scoring, attempts to take into accord how variables may change or interact. One common area for the use of these terms is budget policy in the United States, although it also occurs in many other statistical disputes. Dynamic scoring predicts the impact of fiscal policy changes by forcasting the effects of economic agents reactions to policy. ...


A famous example of static analysis is overpopulation theory; starting with Thomas Malthus at the end of the 18th century, various "experts" have taken some short-term population growth trend and projected it for years into the future, resulting in the prediction that there would be disastrous overpopulation within a generation or two. Malthus himself essentially claimed that British society would collapse under the weight of overpopulation by 1850, while in the sixties the book The Population Bomb made similar doomsday predictions for the US by the 1980s. Map of countries by population density (See List of countries by population density. ... Thomas Robert Malthus, FRS (13th February, 1766 – 29th December, 1834), usually known as Thomas Malthus, although he preferred to be known as Robert Malthus, was an English demographer and political economist. ... The Population Bomb (1968) is a book written by Paul R. Ehrlich. ...


Similarly, the environmental movement took a short-term trend of temperature declines in the 1970s and proclaimed that the world would be in an ice age by 1990. As with the overpopulation theories, the projection ended up less accurate than a roll of the dice because it didn't take into account how things interact, nor how a short-term spike was being treated like a long-term trend. The environmental movement (a term that sometimes includes the conservation and green movements) is a diverse scientific, social, and political movement. ... Variations in CO2, temperature and dust from the Vostok ice core over the last 400 000 years For the animated movie, see Ice Age (movie). ...


As previously mentioned, in budget projection debates, predictions that assume no significant changes in behavior in response to changes in incentives are often condemned as being static projection. The result of these scoring practices is that it tends to discount any policy change that would increase economic growth or enhance efficiency in government programs. By contrast, dynamic scoring refers to projections based on assumptions about the efficiency effects of policies such as tax cuts.


Typically, static analysis works for very simple systems; how fast is snow accumulating in what is thought to be the mid-point of a blizzard. But even then it must be tempered with rationality -- guess how much longer the storm might actually last, rather than assuming that snow will fall continually for the next sixty years, and project the average of the storm so far, rather than plotting the curve of its growth as if that will continue to increase for the second half.


Infinite ideology

When applied to any more complex system, though, the effect tends to be worse at making predictions than the flip of a coin.


One of the most cutting-edge variations on this theme is technological singularity, where people take some factor of knowledge growth, like computer intelligence, and project it into the future, resulting in apparently impossible curves which say that all will be known by a relatively near date. When plotted on a logarithmic graph, 15 separate lists of paradigm shifts for key events in human history show an exponential trend. ...


A satire of this premise has been presented using safety razors; After their invention, all were single razors for seventy years, then the first double-bladed razor was introduced. It only required 15 years for a third blade to be added, and then one year for the fourth and fifth. Fitting just these five data points to a hyperbolic curve produced the absurd prediction that safety razors would have an infinite number of blades by the year 2015, only nine years from the time of calculation[1]. Occams Razor or Hanlons razor A razor is a an edge tool (primarily, used in shaving). ...


External links


  Results from FactBites:
 
TPTP static analysis tutorial part 1 (1629 words)
This first article in the series describes the user-focused view of the TPTP static analysis framework, and will focus solely on the user interface and basic analysis concepts.
Analysis configurations can be added or removed using the buttons in the bottom left part of the dialog.
The first step in creating an analysis configuration is to determine the default range of resources on which the analysis will be performed.
Static code analysis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (412 words)
Static code analysis is a set of methods for analysing software source code or object code in an effort to gain understanding of what the software does and establish certain correctness criteria.
Static analysis is a family of formal methods for automatically deriving information about the behavior of computer software (and also hardware).
Interest in the development of static analysis tools, especially for use on safety-critical computer systems, was renewed after the high profile disaster of Ariane 5 Flight 501, when a space rocket exploded shortly after launch due to a computer bug, surely one of the most expensive of such bugs in history.
  More results at FactBites »


 

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