Approximation Quotes - Page 4

• It's a pretty widely-accepted notion that the atmosphere is a ridiculously complex system, and the best we can do with our models is a rough approximation.

  Jamais Cascio

  Atmosphere, Accepted, Rough

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• Every improvement in our conceptions of justice, as well as in the machinery for the administration of justice, whereby a closer approximation to exact justice may be secured, will make for social peace, though the mere adjudication of conflicting interests will not remove the conflicts themselves nor their cause. That lies deeper than legislatures or courts can probe.

  Thomas Nixon Carver

  Lying, Justice, May

  Thomas Nixon Carver (1915). “Essays in Social Justice”, Harvard university press

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• Premie'  re approximation: j'e  cris pour de  truire, en les de  crivant avec pre  cision, des monstres nocturnes qui menacent d'envahir ma vie e  veille  e. First general point: I write to destroy, by describing exactly the nocturnal monsters that threaten to invade my waking life.

  Alain Robbe-Grillet

  Writing, Monsters, Waking Life

  1984 LeMiroir qui revient.

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• I don't believe that we are what we do although many thinkers argue otherwise. I believe that what we do is, very often, a poor approximation of what we are -- an imperfect manifestation of a much better totality. Even the best of us sometimes bite off, as it were, less than we can chew.

  Donald Barthelme

  Believe, Arguing, Action

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• Change the attitude toward errors. Think of an object's user as attempting to do a task, getting there by imperfect approximations. Don't think of the user as making errors; think of the actions as approximations of what is desired.

  Donald A. Norman

  Attitude, Thinking, Errors

  "The Design of Everyday Things". Book by Don Norman, ch. 5, p. 131, 1988.

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