Mistakes are the best teachers

[Neha]

It is said that "An intelligent person is one who learns from his mistakes but a wise man is one who learns from others mistakes".
It would not be wrong to say that mistakes leads to success if you admit them and try not to repeat. Its the experience only which makes a man perfect. Only admitting your mistake won't do anything good untill and unless you rectify them.So, mistakes are the one that can make your life mistake free..watsay?

[xheavenlyx]

Ofcourse!!!

Mistakes teach a person lots! There was an article i was reading recently on IEEE spectrum mag. which had an image of a ladder with 3 rungs, The 2nd was broken in half the top said 'success'! It was a nice way of putting the point!

Regards

[jumbotech]

Someone said "To err is human" but in our profession errors and mistakes can mean loss of life or valuables.

An example:
Ariane 5 Rocket is lost due to a "Mistake" where engineers installed an outdated version of software causing the total loss of the rocket after 40 seconds of flight.

Mistakes cost lifes, money and time. Don't use the hit and miss approach in your profession. Design out mistakes.

Mistakes are NOT the best teachers.

JT

[xheavenlyx]

In a way I disagree with your last point but overall I do understand what you mean.

TAKEN FROM IEEE Spectrum issue June 2006:


It was the mid-1970s, Sir James D. Meindl was a professor at Stanford University, in California. His group had just paid more than US $1 million for a shiny new epitaxial reactor, in which atoms are deposited layer by layer to produce semiconductor devices, usually experimental ones. It was the latest and greatest tool of the day, and Meindl assigned one of his newest and brightest students to see what it could do. The department's safety rules forbade students from working alone, but that new student wasn't much for following rules. One night, working by himself, he opened a valve to let silane gas flow into the reactor. He'd forgotten to purge the air out of the chamber, and silane explodes on contact with oxygen. The resulting blast ripped the reactor out of the wall. The student was lucky to escape serious injury. He was banned for two weeks.

That student, T.J. Rodgers, went on to found Cypress Semiconductor Corp., in San Jose, Calif. Last year Cypress had $886 million in revenues. “Those were the good old days, when well-meaning accidents were just punished by a slap on the wrist,” Rodgers says today of the incident.

If a design has already been made then it must be checked many times before it can be implimented, but failures always do happen.

And take a look at this article by IEEE Spectrum June 2006 on the same topic which gives a very very clear picture on why success comes with failure (Depends how you define failure)

[The_Big_K]

Originally Posted by jumbotech

Someone said "To err is human" but in our profession errors and mistakes can mean loss of life or valuables.

An example:
Ariane 5 Rocket is lost due to a "Mistake" where engineers installed an outdated version of software causing the total loss of the rocket after 40 seconds of flight.

Mistakes cost lifes, money and time. Don't use the hit and miss approach in your profession. Design out mistakes.

Mistakes are NOT the best teachers.

JT

JT has a point! The topic "Mistakes are the best teachers" is rigid. Consider bungee / para jumping. One mistake and it costs you life. But on the other hand, such mistakes can be used as greatest learning experience. That's all I have to say right now.

The discussion is expected to turn in to a debate. Thread moved to debate section.

-The Big K-

[Neha]

I do agree that mistakes sometimes cost a lot and are not worth doing as Biggie mentioned para jumping but as we are human beings and to err is human and on the other hand nobody is perfect to commit no mistakes.Its not that we intentionally commit mistakes they just happen.And who said that we can learn from our mistakes only, we can learn from other's experiences as well.

[Nickhouse]

I can see both sides, screwing up is not good, but if one has a modicum of intelligence, you learn don't do it twice

[aashima]

Mistakes are our teachers till they harm us to an affordable extent. They can even turn to a curse if they are that big in their affect. It costs a big heart to realise one's own mistake a learn a lesson from it while it costs a wiser heart to learn from the mistakes of the others.
And ofcourse One should never repeat the same mistake, after all there are so many new ones to try out!

[Swati]

well i would say that we definetlt learn from our mistakes....mistakes can take life....but in that case it is the lesson for the person who did it and for the rest of the world who comes to know about it.........so whethere its ours or others mistake we should definetly learn from it and shouldnt repeat it again..........we do learn the things which we r taught to us but very soon we forget them....but if we do a mistake we do remember the lesson we learn form it...

[ankitvirmani]

Mistakes are no disgrace and they can be the best teachers provided that we acknowledge and accept them.Acceptance requires a lot of courage and this in itself is something.The wise learn from their mistakes but the wisest learn from other's mistakes too and ammend their actions.

[Natalia_]

I agree with all of you. Remember that people who experienced the mistake will never do it again. It is becouse a person made the conclusion for himself. Sometimes I think that we are created for the mistakes. I don't think that it is possible to teach on other's mistakes.

[MaRo]

Unfortunately, there are mistakes that we should make in our lives

Like Love.

[ash]

Originally Posted by MaRo

Unfortunately, there are mistakes that we should make in our lives

Like Love.

Aww, cheer up buddy! There are many more fishes in the pond to catch

Anyway, as Jumbotech and BigK pointed out, mistakes in critical professions such as medicine and engineering can cost lives. Thats where constant testing and simulations come in.. learn from the mistakes in the design stage only! But, maybe if we are alone in the lab (without an expitaxial reactor, that is), we can do some wild experiments and discover new inventions through "mistakes"

back to our personal lives, I definitely agree mistakes is a good teaching tool to gain experience.