F Minus by Tony Carrillo for October 13, 2022

Try using imaginary numbers.

In other words we need someone that can cook the books.

Fudge the numbers, but you’re the one they’ll come after

It’s not easy to find a good scape goat now days.

You need computer modeling software. You can get it to say whatever you want with cute graphs and pie charts.

They’re threatening to bring in a congressman?

Teach probability and statistics. It is based on natural logarithms and nobody knows why they work. There is no need to be exact if hitting the broad side of a barn will do.

P.L.E.A.S.E (How I Met Your Mother).

Oh hey, its the story of Enron

You can actually do this with some civil engineering equations. Some of the parameters are determined by “best professional judgement”, so there is quite a range of outcomes depending on the factors selected. Normally, the engineers put a lot of effort into figuring out the most realistic numbers based on surface conditions, etc.

One time, after the Los Alamos fire, my company was hired to re-size culverts that had washed out. We knew that flooding was going to exceed historical rates for a number of years due to the fire. So the engineers chose the largest plausible values for each of the parameters that required best professional judgement. The culverts were probably massively oversized, but at least they weren’t going to wash out.

Must be working for the Federal Government….

Anti-A.I.

they can get someone bad at math for a fraction of his pay…