Expected Error Margins
A common feature of "fudge factors" in science is their arbitrariness, and their retrospective nature.
However, in project management it's common to build a certain error margin into the predicted "resource cost" of a project to make predictions more realistic: there are many unforeseen factors that may delay a project or make it more costly, but very few factors that could result in it being delivered before time or under the calculated budget ... so to some degree, "unexpected" overruns are to be expected, even if their precise nature can't be predicted in advance. Experienced planners may know that a certain type of project will tend to overrun by a certain percentage of its calculated resource requirements, and may multiply the "ideal" calculations by a safety margin to produce a more realistic estimate, and this margin may sometimes be referred to as a fudge factor. However, when planning ahead for expected unpredictabilities, these "error margins" are usually assigned other, more specific names : for instance in warehouse stock control, where a certain amount of stock is expected to disappear naturally through damage, pilfering or other unexplained problems, the discrepancy is referred to as shrinkage.
In engineering, a "fudge factor" may be introduced to allow a margin of error in unknown quantities.
Read more about this topic: Fudge Factor
Famous quotes containing the words expected, error and/or margins:
“What strikes me as odd now is how much my father managed to get across to me without those heart-to-hearts which I’ve read about fathers and sons having in the study or in the rowboat or in the car.... Somehow I understood completely how he expected me to behave, in small matters as well as large, even though I can’t remember being given any lectures about it beyond the occasional, undramatic “You might as well be a mensch.””
—Calvin Trillin (20th century)
“We call contrary to nature what happens contrary to custom; nothing is anything but according to nature, whatever it may be, Let this universal and natural reason drive out of us the error and astonishment that novelty brings us.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“Everything is becoming science fiction. From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the 20th century.”
—J.G. (James Graham)