I guess now we finally know why Babbage never finished building the Analytical Engine.

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[–] 16 points 1 year ago (4 children)

No, they were literally asking if the machine was able to return the right result if the person didn't enter it ccorrectly. You know, like how some people expect search engines and AI to give them the answer they want even if they use the wrong words.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Oh like when you type "population of tenton" and it returns "Did you mean Trenton? That population is XYZ"

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago*

    Yes, except in the case of Babbage's machine they were asking if putting 1235 instead of 1234 would give the same answer.

    Search engines work that way because of having large large datasets and pattern recognition that can suggest based on typos. Calculators don't do that.

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