Top 15 Robert E. Machol Quotes

Most accidents in well-designed systems involve two or more events of low probability occurring in the worst possible combination.

Sometimes, where a complex problem can be illuminated by many tools, one can be forgiven for applying the one he knows best.

There comes a time when one must stop suggesting and evaluating new solutions, and get on with the job of analyzing and implementing one pretty good solution.

If the assumptions are wrong, the conclusions aren't likely to be very good.

The conclusions of most good operations research studies are obvious.

The ideal system engineer is an engineer thoroughly versed in his field but conversant with and knowledgeable of other fields. You have to have the capability and desire to become a 'six-month expert'... You've got to want to become a generalist, too.

Scientists possess healthy skepticism. They realize that you've got to know the answer before you measure it.

Mathematicians are there to find the constraints and to eliminate those things that aren't constraints... I know this will surprise many of you, but they are useful!

The purpose and real value of systems engineering is... to keep going around the loop; find inadequacies and make improvements.

Everyone knows what engineering is. All that's left is to define systems, and I'm not fool enough to do that.

Sometimes it is more difficult to formulate the criterion for a problem than to state the question itself.

[There is a] basic problem … of building a mathematical model of thought processes, and in particular of those aspects of thought which are concerned with information and decision processes. The perceptron is one type of model -- a set of memory devices connected in random fashion-- which has not yet achieved useful results but certainly seems to be a promising approach. The self-adaptive feedback control system which goes beyond the normal servo function of controlling its output, and in addition controls the parameters by which it controls its output is another which has already achieved pragmatic results in equipment control. It may be that the question of self-adaptation is a key to the whole question of how the human functions in a decisioning situation. For in many cases the ability of the human mind to adapt itself to a changing and complex environment is beyond our present aims in model construction.

We assert that it is possible to describe analytically any human function which can be reasonably defined in objective terms and we specifically include in such functions "thinking" insofar as that term is definable. If by "thinking" one means being able to do arithmetic, or play a good game of chess, or learn from experience, or make optimal decisions in exceedingly complex situations, then we assert that thinking can be described analytically. And there are two important corollaries: if It can be described analytically, it can be simulated; and if it can be simulated, it can be performed mechanically.

We have discovered in this past decade that thinking, and decision, are not solely the province of the metaphysicist, but are appropriate subjects for scientific inquiry.

At this time it is difficult to put one's finger on any single contribution in the decade 1950 - 1960 which is comparable to those above, and yet progress has probably been even greater. From the point of view of an educator, one cannot overlook the wide distribution which has been given to these ideas. There has been remarkable progress from analysis to synthesis, always a sign of maturity in a field of analytic endeavour. There has been consolidation, for example in the establishment of a more rigorous basis for information theory; there has been unification, for example in the demonstration of the formal similarity between game theory and ; there has been application to mathematically more difficult situations, for example nonlinear servo systems and information channels with memory; there has been implementation, as in commercially available computers which by any reasonable measure are hun- dreds of times more powerful than the primitive devices of 1950; there has been de-limitation of the boundaries of many of these fields.