Garbage In, Garbage Out
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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. The aphorism GIGO was originally coined by Stephen "Wilf" Hey, a programmer who had a regular column in PC Plus magazine.
GIGO is usually said in response to users who complain that a program did not "do the right thing" when given imperfect input. The first example of this was probably cited by Charles Babbage, inventor of the first programmable device who said:
On two occasions I have been asked,—"Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" [...] I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.[1]
It is also commonly used to describe failures in human decision making due to faulty, incomplete, or imprecise data. For example, a poorly typeset TeX document will look bad because the user did not write the TeX source well.
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; another is the faulty belief that just because it comes up in computer output makes it gospel, even if it's obviously wrong.
It can also be used as an explanation for the poor quality of a digitized audio or video file. Although digitizing is the first step in cleaning up a signal, it does not, by itself, improve the quality. Defects in the original analog signal will be faithfully recorded, but may be identified and removed by a subsequent step. (See Digital signal processing.)
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[edit] Non-computer-related use of the term
The term can be used in any field in which it is difficult to create a good result when given bad input. For example, in translation, it is difficult to convert a source text that is confused, illogical or missing pertinent information into a quality translation. A translator may use the phrase "Garbage in, garbage out" to explain the importance of good source text to a client.
This is not just a non-computer-related use. "Decision-makers increasingly face computer-generated information and analyses that could be collected and analyzed in no other way. Precisely for that reason, going behind that output is out of the question, even if one has good cause to be suspicious. In short, the computer analysis becomes the gospel." [2]
[edit] Trivia
Garbage in garbage out is also a cheat code that appears in the computer game SimCity 3000. After inputing, players are able to use all kinds of garbage treatment utilities despite development stages.
[edit] Notes and references
- ^ Babbage, Charles (1864). Passages from the Life of a Philosopher. Longman and Co..
- ^ Daniel T. Brooks, Brandon Becker and Jerry R. Marlatt, "Computer Applications in Particular Industries: Securities" appearing in Bigelow, "Computers & The Law", American Bar Association, Section of Science and Technology, Third Edition 1981 at 250, 253.
[edit] See also
This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, which is licensed under the GFDL.
