-> Today's calculators would allow a moment to verify the thought ...  
-> as I guess yesterday's slide rule would have - roughly.  It always  
-> worries me that validation is often missed out of popular versions  
-> of the scientific method... 
 
-> :-)) 
  
I always call it "checking". Yes. I agree. I have recently been 
re-hashing a little computer program I wrote long ago that 
interconverts between Gregorian dates and "Julian Days" - a dating 
system used by astronomers that simply counts days since a starting 
date long ago (Jan 1, 4713 BCE, to be precise!). One of the things that 
I like about the program is that it uses *completely* different 
algorithms to convert in the two directions. The fact that the results 
are always compatible with each other is a good check on them both. 
  
But checking takes time, and usually a brain cell or two. Both seem to 
be in short supply... 
  
                         dow 
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