Customer: "I've been doing risk analysis by hand for five years, and we finally got your program so we could do it automatically -- but there's a bug in it. The answers come out differently each time."
Tech Support: "Sir, are you aware that our program uses Monte-Carlo analysis?"
Customer: "Of course I am. That's why I bought it."
Tech Support: "Sir, do you know what Monte-Carlo analysis does?"
Customer: "Don't get rude with me, of course I do."
Tech Support: "Put briefly, sir, it runs through your project several times, throwing random delays in, and at the end it averages out the results."
Customer: "I know all that -- what I want to know is why it keeps giving me different answers every time I run it."
*************************
There was an engineer who had an exceptional gift for fixing all things mechanical. After serving his company loyally for over 30 years, he happily retired.
Several years later the company contacted him regarding a seemingly impossible problem they were having with one of their multi-million dollar machines.
They had tried everything and everyone else to get the machine fixed, but to no avail. In desperation, they called on the retired engineer who had solved so many of their problems in the past. The engineer reluctantly took the challenge.
He spent a day studying the huge machine. At the end of the day, he marked a small "x " in chalk on a particular component of the machine and proudly stated, "This is where your problem is."
The part was replaced and the machine worked perfectly again. The company received a bill for $50,000 from the engineer for his service. They demanded an itemize d accounting of his charges.
The engineer responded with the following account:
Chalk: $1
Knowing where to put it: $49,999
It was paid in full and the engineer retired again in peace.
No comments:
Post a Comment