From a naval disaster to an airplane crash, here are 8 most destructive mathematical errors
in history.
Number 8 Vasa Warship The Vasa was a warship built by order of the
King of Sweden, in the 17th century.
Upon its completion, in 1628, the ship was one of the most powerfully armed vessels in
the world.
It was a representation of King Gustavus Adolphus’ ambitions for himself and the future of Sweden.
Even though it was dangerously unstable, the Vasa left Stockholm for its maiden voyage,
on August 10, 1628.
The ship sank in less than 1,400 yards, claiming the lives of 30 sailors.
The ship’s center of gravity was too high, meaning that anything stronger than a breeze
would’ve caused it to keel over.
The problem came down to the hull’s construction, which had an asymmetrical distribution of
mass.
That’s because the teams working on the vessel used both Amsterdam feet and Swedish
feet.
The difference between the two units of measurement is a mere inch, but it was enough to cause
a naval disaster.
The Vasa was salvaged in 1961 and found a second life as a museum ship.
Number 7 Spanish Submarines In the early 2000s, the Spanish navy commissioned
the construction of four diesel-electric submarines.
The project would cost upwards of $2 billion.
In 2013, as one of the S-80 submarines was nearly completed, it was discovered that 70
to 100 tons had been added to its weight.
This was the result of a miscalculation in which an engineer had put a decimal in the
wrong place.
The extra weight meant that the submarine couldn’t resurface after diving.
Lengthening it was considered as a means of increasing its buoyancy at a cost of $8.2
million for each 3.2 feet.
Navantia, the state-owned company in charge of building the submarines, brought on General
Dynamics Electric Boat to help tackle the weight issues.
The company has been the primary submarine builder for the US Navy for over a century.
Before we continue with our list, answer this question.
Who was the exclamation “Eureka!” a marker of a sudden discovery, first attributed to?
Was it a.
Leonardo da Vinci b.
Archimedes c.
Albert Einstein d.
Alfred Noble Let us know what you think in the comments
section below and stay tuned to find out the right answer.
Number 6 Y2K While the Y2K event turned out to be quite
harmless, the build-up to it suggested an impending apocalyptic scenario.
Some fringe groups and individuals even made doomsday preparations.
They expected the collapse of modern institutions, planes dropping out of the sky and missiles
being launched uncontrollably.
Others used the Y2K glitch as a means of spreading religious propaganda.
In reality, it was a rather simple numerical problem.
Many computer programs represented four digit years, with only the final two digits.
This made the year 2000 indistinguishable from 1900, thus causing system glitches.
The errors were expected to cause a domino effect and bring about technological problems.
However, many countries addressed the issue and upgraded their systems, so there were
only a few minor failures reported when the clocks rolled over to 2000.
Number 5 Polar Diet Between 1910 and 1912, explorer Robert Falcon
Scott led a team of men to Antarctica, in an expedition known as Terra Nova.
They reached the geographic South Pole, but tragically perished on the way back.
Researchers believe that the five explorers died from a combination of ill weather and
starvation.
The latter was due to a miscalculation of their caloric intake.
Simply put, they ate food that was too high in protein and two low in fat.
The men hauled their supplies, dragging sledges by hand, across hundreds of miles of ice and
snow.
In doing so, they consumed more calories than Olympic-level athletes.
Scott’s rations of pony meat, chocolate, butter, cereals and raisins, were not enough
to sustain that level of effort.
The men eventually succumbed to chronic and severe emaciation.
Number 4 Conviction of Sally Clark In 1999, English solicitor Sally Clark was
wrongly convicted for the murder of her two children.
Her first son had died in his cot within a few weeks of his birth, in December 1996.
Two years later, her second son died in similar conditions.
There were also signs of trauma, most likely from the woman’s attempts to revive the
children.
Clark’s defense argued for sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, in both cases.
The prosecution relied heavily on its expert witness, pediatrician Professor Sir Roy Meadows.
He’d been knighted in 1998, for his services in child health and was considered a reliable
source.
However, during the trial of Sally Clark he presented flawed statistical evidence, which
influenced Clark’s conviction.
Meadows argued that the chance for a single cot death in an affluent, non-smoking family
like Sally Cark’s was one in 8,543.
He then squared that figure and argued that the probability for two cot deaths was 1 in
approximately 73 million.
The Royal Statistical Society published a statement in 2001 claiming there was no statistical
basis for such a calculation.
Therefore, Meadow’s claim was determined as being a misuse of statistics in courts.
Clark served three years of her sentence prior to being released in 2003.
The loss of her two children and the subsequent imprisonment caused the woman to develop severe
psychiatric problems.
In 2007 she died in her home from alcohol poisoning.
Number 3 Quebec Bridge Collapse On August 29, 1907, the central span of the
Quebec Bridge collapsed in the St. Lawrence River, killing 75 workers.
The span of the bridge had been lengthened from 1,600 feet to 1,800 feet, so that its
pillars could be built closer to the river bank, at a lower cost.
Funding was supplied by the Canadian government in 1903.
The schematics were rushed so that steel production for the bridge could begin, and the weight
wasn’t recalculated for the extra length.
As the bridge was nearing completion, one engineer noted that some of the steel beams
had become bent.
By the time his warning reached Quebec, it was too late.
The bridge had collapsed in just 15 seconds.
So, who was the famous exclamation “Eureka!” first attributed to?
The right answer was b, Archimedes.
It translates as “I found it!”
The ancient Greek mathematician supposedly uttered it as he was taking a bath.
He suddenly understood that the volume of water displaced was equal to that of the submerged
body part, thus unlocking new measurement methods for irregular objects.
According to the legend, he was so excited that he jumped out of the tub and ran naked
through the streets of Sicily telling people of his discovery.
Number 2 Economic Bubbles Economic bubbles could very well be placed
in a list of their own.
For the sake of brevity, we’re giving them, as a whole, the number two spot.
Economic bubbles occur when the price of an asset is calculated on improbable or inconsistent
views of the future.
Another way to look at it would be as trading something at a price that far exceeds its
fundamental value.
One of the first examples was Tulip Mania, in the 17th century Dutch Republic.
The tulip had been recently introduced and it was unlike any other European flower.
It was considered fashionable, exotic and a true status symbol.
Prices for bulbs rose to staggering heights before suddenly plummeting, in February 1637.
While this wasn’t such a significant economic collapse, other bubbles have wrought havoc
throughout history.
These include the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the dot-com bubble or the property bubble
of 2007.
The reality of an economic bubble is that it’s bound to burst and, when it does, it
can destroy the lives of millions of people.
Number 1 Air Canada Flight In 1983, A Boeing 767 carrying 69 occupants
made an emergency landing in Gimli, Manitoba.
It was travelling on a domestic route from Ottawa to Edmonton when it ran out of fuel
at approximately 41,000 feet.
The pilots managed to glide the aircraft for roughly 60 miles before landing on a decommissioned
runway in Gimli, which had been converted into a racetrack.
The aviation incident was subsequently deemed the “Gimli Glider”.
An investigation revealed that one of the problems had simply been a matter of unit
conversion.
At the time, the aviation sector in Canada was transitioning to the metric system.
While all of the company’s aircrafts were still using Imperial units, the 767 had already
been calibrated for metric units.
However, this went unnoticed by the ground crew as well as the pilots.
The calculations for the amount of fuel needed were done in pounds instead of kilograms.
This led to the aircraft flying with roughly half of the fuel it required to make it to
its destination.
Air Canada Flight 143 could have ended in tragedy but, fortunately, everyone aboard
the aircraft survived.
Thanks for watching!
Suppose an error was made and $1 million was transferred to your bank account, would you
keep the money?
Let us know in the comments section below!