Have you heard of the Butterfly effect? In chaos theory(mathematics), Butterfly effect is explained as the sensitive dependence on initial conditions, where a small change in one place can affect largely to a later state. The name of the effect is derived from a hypothetical situation where a hurricane is formed because a butterfly flapped its wings several weeks before. Well, I have experienced the butterfly effect in a different way and that incident does not involve a butterfly or any other insects with wings or hurricanes.
It was the year 2011, the month of August(if I recall correctly), I was studying in 11th grade. During the start of the year, they had announced that we, the 11th graders are going to host a school fest called Napsonic. We were really excited at the fact that we were going to organize and host a mega-event, all by ourselves. Each student signed up for one particular department of their choice. It was decided that the one-day fest will consist of 4 departments(Music, Art, Computer Science and Quiz). The whole event was informally and unofficially code-named MACQ. We segregated ourselves into the respective departments based on our interests.
I joined the Computer Science department. The first few days, we put our creative part of our brains to work to make some events which we can organize with limited availability of software,hardware, finances and man-power. After hours of debating and deciding, we came to the conclusion that we will break up the Computer Science department into four groups, namely; Programming, Pictionary, Treasure hunt and gaming. We divided ourselves into these four groups. Treasure hunt was supposed to be on the computer only. So it was kind of a virtual treasure hunt. Everything went well while preparing for the event. We were working hard day and(not night) evening. In the name of testing few games in our computer lab, we ourselves played the game for hours. In between the games, we took short breaks to salvage some on our treasure hunt and programming events. Moreover, we were all competitive gamers, so we take our job seriously. But, that proved to be costly because we couldn't finish preparations for our school fest.
One week before the deadline, we started working overtime, that is after school hours(or after 2.45pm as we call it). We finally stopped playing games and started doing work. Ofcourse, we were just following great people's words-'Play hard, work hard'. So that play hard part was accomplished even though we were not satisfied. Now, we had to satisfy the second objective. By the eve of D-day, we managed to complete our work and were ready to organize a great, fun-filled event.
The next day dawned and I was excited to host one of the first event of my life. I went to school early and inspected everything to see if they are in the right place. As if the president is going to be present, I left no stone unturned. I even checked if all the chairs are arranged in proper orderly manner. The participants arrived and there were about 32 schools present. The first and second round went smoothly without any incident. It was time for the third round called treasure hunt. The teams breezed through the first few levels of treasure hunt only because the puzzles were too easy. Throughout the duration of the round, I was walking around the computer lab trying to act majestic and boss-like. After some time, when the teams were at half-way mark before finding treasure, I spotted a few nervous glances. Slowly, some teams started getting worried as they were racking their brains to get through one level. I smirked to myself thinking that the level was too smart for them. Slowly, I could see that the teams were getting a little uneasy. They started using other methods of calculations and also primitive methods.
After a few minutes, I realized that there was a serious problem. The voices in the room were getting louder. One person from one of the team came up and explained the situation. He mentioned that the team couldn't get the write password even though they have done everything right. I looked into the problem and he was indeed right. He had done the right calculations and the answer was right. But when he typed the answer in the password window, the prompt said wrong password. That particular level involved binary number system. The task was that the teams will be given a 4-letter word. This word should be converted to binary digits and they must be arranged in order. The number of 0's and 1's should be counted and the password for the next level is the number of 0's in the left and number of 1's in the right. It so happened that the number of 0's and number of 1's were both 16, so the password was supposed to be 1616. But according to our records, we had set the password as 1716. Since I already knew the password as we had set it previously, I knew that the password they entered was wrong. Also, the password which was preset was logically wrong. Any binary number obtained from letters or words are always expressed in 16 bits. But our password was 17 bits which was wrong.
Eventually, all the teams realized that the pre-set password was wrong. We decided to share the points equally among teams and we sympathetically apologized to them for taking away the fun in the game.
This error was in fact a mere human error. This could have been avoided if more number of people had checked manually but since we didn't have time, we couldn't do it. This incident had a great impact in my life because it practically showed me how The Butterfly Effect works. One small bit created a huge chaos in the otherwise peaceful system.
I hope I haven't bored you with such a long story. I just felt I had to share this with my readers because there are small things in life which we tend to overlook. These small things can later snowball into big problems in the future. In Mathematics, there is a chaos theory called butterfly effect. There is a separate research on that topic. If you want to know more, try reading on it. Also, the chaos theory is another interesting read.
For the movie buffs out there, there is this mind-blowing movie called 'The Butterfly Effect'(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289879/?ref_=nv_sr_1).
It was the year 2011, the month of August(if I recall correctly), I was studying in 11th grade. During the start of the year, they had announced that we, the 11th graders are going to host a school fest called Napsonic. We were really excited at the fact that we were going to organize and host a mega-event, all by ourselves. Each student signed up for one particular department of their choice. It was decided that the one-day fest will consist of 4 departments(Music, Art, Computer Science and Quiz). The whole event was informally and unofficially code-named MACQ. We segregated ourselves into the respective departments based on our interests.
I joined the Computer Science department. The first few days, we put our creative part of our brains to work to make some events which we can organize with limited availability of software,hardware, finances and man-power. After hours of debating and deciding, we came to the conclusion that we will break up the Computer Science department into four groups, namely; Programming, Pictionary, Treasure hunt and gaming. We divided ourselves into these four groups. Treasure hunt was supposed to be on the computer only. So it was kind of a virtual treasure hunt. Everything went well while preparing for the event. We were working hard day and(not night) evening. In the name of testing few games in our computer lab, we ourselves played the game for hours. In between the games, we took short breaks to salvage some on our treasure hunt and programming events. Moreover, we were all competitive gamers, so we take our job seriously. But, that proved to be costly because we couldn't finish preparations for our school fest.
One week before the deadline, we started working overtime, that is after school hours(or after 2.45pm as we call it). We finally stopped playing games and started doing work. Ofcourse, we were just following great people's words-'Play hard, work hard'. So that play hard part was accomplished even though we were not satisfied. Now, we had to satisfy the second objective. By the eve of D-day, we managed to complete our work and were ready to organize a great, fun-filled event.
The next day dawned and I was excited to host one of the first event of my life. I went to school early and inspected everything to see if they are in the right place. As if the president is going to be present, I left no stone unturned. I even checked if all the chairs are arranged in proper orderly manner. The participants arrived and there were about 32 schools present. The first and second round went smoothly without any incident. It was time for the third round called treasure hunt. The teams breezed through the first few levels of treasure hunt only because the puzzles were too easy. Throughout the duration of the round, I was walking around the computer lab trying to act majestic and boss-like. After some time, when the teams were at half-way mark before finding treasure, I spotted a few nervous glances. Slowly, some teams started getting worried as they were racking their brains to get through one level. I smirked to myself thinking that the level was too smart for them. Slowly, I could see that the teams were getting a little uneasy. They started using other methods of calculations and also primitive methods.
After a few minutes, I realized that there was a serious problem. The voices in the room were getting louder. One person from one of the team came up and explained the situation. He mentioned that the team couldn't get the write password even though they have done everything right. I looked into the problem and he was indeed right. He had done the right calculations and the answer was right. But when he typed the answer in the password window, the prompt said wrong password. That particular level involved binary number system. The task was that the teams will be given a 4-letter word. This word should be converted to binary digits and they must be arranged in order. The number of 0's and 1's should be counted and the password for the next level is the number of 0's in the left and number of 1's in the right. It so happened that the number of 0's and number of 1's were both 16, so the password was supposed to be 1616. But according to our records, we had set the password as 1716. Since I already knew the password as we had set it previously, I knew that the password they entered was wrong. Also, the password which was preset was logically wrong. Any binary number obtained from letters or words are always expressed in 16 bits. But our password was 17 bits which was wrong.
Eventually, all the teams realized that the pre-set password was wrong. We decided to share the points equally among teams and we sympathetically apologized to them for taking away the fun in the game.
This error was in fact a mere human error. This could have been avoided if more number of people had checked manually but since we didn't have time, we couldn't do it. This incident had a great impact in my life because it practically showed me how The Butterfly Effect works. One small bit created a huge chaos in the otherwise peaceful system.
I hope I haven't bored you with such a long story. I just felt I had to share this with my readers because there are small things in life which we tend to overlook. These small things can later snowball into big problems in the future. In Mathematics, there is a chaos theory called butterfly effect. There is a separate research on that topic. If you want to know more, try reading on it. Also, the chaos theory is another interesting read.
For the movie buffs out there, there is this mind-blowing movie called 'The Butterfly Effect'(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289879/?ref_=nv_sr_1).
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