The Debugger's Theorem
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This reminder has been on a wall in my house for ~15 years As a programmer for 22 years I've fixed thousands of bugs, and created many times more. Very often it appeared that the problem I was trying to fix had multiple independent causes. However I have found - almost invariably - that if you dig long enough you'll find a single cause for all the problems you are seeing. In fact the moment you hit on the right theory is often really obvious because it suddenly explains a whole bunch of other things that have been going wrong! But, I wondered, can this observation be proven mathematically? It turns out it can! The Debugger's Theorem If a system that usually works currently isn't working, then it is more likely than not that there's just one thing causing all the observed problems. Proof Let $P_0$ be the probability that the system has no problems, $P_1$ be the probability that one independent problem has occurred, $P_{2+}$ the probability that...