Aces High Bulletin Board

General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Jimdandy on January 21, 2001, 12:12:00 AM

Title: Where did this come from?
Post by: Jimdandy on January 21, 2001, 12:12:00 AM

Can anyone tell me the meaning and origins of these terms.

1. SWAG.

2. Back of the envelope calculation.

3. Order of magnitude estimation.

4. log on.

Title: Where did this come from?
Post by: RAM on January 21, 2001, 06:53:00 AM

Huhmm...I think that SWAG comes from the Sonar men in the Submarines.

Something like "Sonar Wild bellybutton Guess" or something like that, is when a sonarist gets a very faint contact and tries to extract some data on heading, speed, etc, only with the very limited source of information that his contact is.

But as always I may be wrong  (http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/Smileys/default/smile.gif)

Title: Where did this come from?
Post by: Dago on January 21, 2001, 07:49:00 AM

Scientific Wild bellybutton Guess

Title: Where did this come from?
Post by: Jimdandy on January 21, 2001, 10:31:00 AM

 

Quote

Originally posted by Dago:
Scientific Wild bellybutton Guess

Dago is right as far as I know. I'll wait a bit and see if anyone answers the others. Then I'll post them.

Title: Where did this come from?
Post by: CptTrips on January 21, 2001, 10:53:00 AM

All those terms were invented by Al Gore.

 (http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/Smileys/default/wink.gif)

Wab

Title: Where did this come from?
Post by: Jimdandy on January 21, 2001, 11:58:00 AM

 

Quote

Originally posted by AKWabbit:
All those terms were invented by Al Gore.

  (http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/Smileys/default/wink.gif)

Wab

You win the $64 question! LOL

Title: Where did this come from?
Post by: Jimdandy on January 22, 2001, 06:01:00 PM

Dago answered #1.

Number two was is an old term from science and engineering. It was a more accurate SWAG. You and your engineering buddies would set down at the local dive and pencil out the performance parameters of that new fighter you were all dreaming of or that new big block muscle car on the back of the a handy piece of paper. It's also called a back of the napkin calc. (http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/Smileys/default/smile.gif)

Three is a different version of SWAG. It means that you feel that the number your guessing will be within a factor of ten of the actual amount. Astronomers and people that have to estimate very large numbers use it. Example: I think that there are 1000 widgets out there. An order of magnitude would be 100-1000 widgets.

Four is what we do everyday on the computer. In the old days computer time was very expensive. You had to pay for every second you were using the mainframe. There were really no other computers but main frames way back when. Everyone had to fight for time on these computers. So you would log in when you started and log out when you were done. It meant that back then you real tried extra hard to optimize your code and do your best to make sure it was right the first time. They still do it today for real important computers.