@mrmhead Said
Einstein is attributed to have said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
He never worked in Technology.
Doing the same thing over and over, and getting different results is Technology.
To put it simply:
Something broke over the weekend, in fact two somethings - in the same way.
But these were the only two somethings out of about 15 other somethings that were just fine.
Well I tried to fix Thing One - going back and forth, doing, undoing, trying to look for differences. When I finally zeroed in on what was changing, I tried the same fix again ... And It Fixed!?!?! WTF I have no explanation on why it worked the 5th time but not the first .....
Tomorrow is Thing Two's turn.
I believe that Al was referring to hypotheses where the variables are fixed.
Story time:
There was a problem. I tried several solutions and one of them worked. I gave the idea to my supervisor and he submitted it to the office. A short time later this engineer kid comes down to the floor acting like it was his idea. Unfortunately he misunderstood and wanted to do it in a way that I had tried and that did not work. So informed him. He got all nasty and said I should do what I was told. So I did. And it did not work. And ...and then he suddenly realized it was not his idea after all. And following the principle... "if at first you don't succeed, give up." the office decided to outsource job, and they did, and the people they hired did what I had suggested, and it cost ten times as much and there were no Christmas bonuses that year because they did not have the money. And being stupid seems to be a requisite for a job in upper management.