雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第8章:水銀延時線(57)
This particular argument arose because Alan had become involved in a problem of numerical analysis, the work.done in Goodwin's section.
In 1943 the statistician H. Hotelling had analysed the procedure for solving simultaneous equations (or, roughly equivalently, for inverting a matrix) and his result made it appear that errors would grow very rapidly as successive equations were eliminated.
1943年，統計學家H·霍特林分析了求解聯立方程組的過程（或者可以粗略地看成求解矩陣的逆），他表明隨着等式的消除，誤差會迅速增長。If this were so it would undermine the practical usefulness of the ACE.
如果這個結論成立，那它將會影響ACE的實際效用。
Goodwin's section, being directly concerned with the problem, had attacked it heuristically in 1946 by solving a set of eighteen equations that had come up in an aerodynamic calculation, and Alan had joined in (notably the least competent at the detailed work), on the desk machine exercise.
古德溫的部門正在直接研究這個問題，他們在1946年通過解一個空氣動力學的18元方程組，試圖推翻該結論，圖靈也用臺式計算器參與了這項工作（值得注意的是，他本來最不擅長這類工作）。To their surprise, they found the final errors to be remarkably small.
出乎他們意料的是，他們發現結果的誤差小到完全可以忽略。Alan had undertaken a theoretical analysis of why this should be.
圖靈寫了一篇文章來證明爲什麼會是這樣。It was a typical Turing problem, needing a fresh attack, and with a concrete application. He tackled it much as he had developed a theory of probability for use at Bletchley.
這是典型的圖靈作風，他一定要反覆推敲，並且親自證明一切，正如他在布萊切利搞出來的概率理論。This work of course, did not lie far in the past, and he set Mike Woodger some probability problems, including the one about the 'barrels of gunpowder'.
當然，他的概率工作並沒有沉睡在歷史中。圖靈交給麥克·伍格一些概率問題，包括一個關於"炸藥桶"的問題。There was also professional contact arising out of wartime work.
同時，當年的戰時工作，還爲現在促成了一些專業上的溝通：Jack Good and Newman had made a visit to the ν PL—Newman, of course, being interested in setting up his Manchester computer project—and Jack had managed to disprove Alan's assertion that no one could write an instruction table that was free from error at the first attempt.
傑克·古德和紐曼拜訪了國家物理實驗室。紐曼自然對他的曼徹斯特計算機項目感興趣，傑克則推翻了圖靈的論斷，圖靈認爲沒有人能夠寫出毫無錯誤的指令表。Jack Good had also written a short book on Probability and the Weighing of Evidence, effectively setting out the theory they had employed at Bletchley, though not its more advanced applications.
傑克·古德寫了一本書，叫《概率論與證據權重》，充分地總結了他們在布萊切利提出的理論，儘管沒有提出什麼新的應用。The 'sequential analysis' method was, as it happened, soon published in America by the statistician A. Wald,18 who had developed it independently for the testing of industrial components.
"序列分析"方法剛一出現，就被統計學家A·瓦德在美國發表了，他爲了檢驗工業零件而獨立地提出了這個方法。Alan, in contrast, published nothing that came of his Bletchley work, except in the less direct sense that almost everything he was doing was flowing from his wartime experience added to his pre-war theory of machines.
與此相反，圖靈沒有爲他在布萊切利的工作發表任何東西，他戰時的實踐經驗和戰前的機器理論全都隨風而去，只在他腦中留下了一些思考。
