View source for Engineering:Failure

{{Short description|Not meeting a desired or intended objective}}
{{This|the social concept|structural and systems failures|Structural integrity and failure|and|Reliability engineering}}
{{pp-semi-indef}}
[[File:Failure is not a crime. Sign on Leh-Nubra road.2010.jpg|thumb|"Failing is not a crime but lack of effort is" – sign on [[Place:Leh|Leh]] to Nubra road, Ladakh]]
'''Failure''' is the social concept of not meeting a desirable or intended [[Philosophy:Goal|objective]], and is usually viewed as the opposite of [[Philosophy:Success|success]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/failure|title=Failure - Definition of failure by Merriam-Webster|work=merriam-webster.com|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150716191304/http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/failure|archive-date=16 July 2015}}</ref> The criteria for failure depends on context, and may be relative to a particular observer or belief system. One person might consider a failure what another person considers a success, particularly in cases of direct competition or a zero-sum game. Similarly, the degree of success or failure in a situation may be differently viewed by distinct observers or participants, such that a situation that one considers to be a failure, another might consider to be a success, a qualified success or a neutral situation.

It may also be difficult or impossible to ascertain whether a situation meets criteria for failure or success due to ambiguous or ill-defined definition of those criteria. Finding useful and effective criteria or [[Heuristic|heuristic]]s to judge the success or failure of a situation may itself be a significant task.

== Sociology ==
Cultural historian Scott Sandage argues that the concept of failure underwent a metamorphosis in the United States over the course of the 19th century. Initially, Sandage notes, financial failure, or [[Finance:Bankruptcy|bankruptcy]], was understood as an event in a person's life: an occurrence, not a character trait. The notion of a person ''being'' a failure, Sandage argues, is a relative historical novelty: "[n]ot until the eve of the Civil War did Americans commonly label an [[Finance:Insolvency|insolvent]] man 'a failure{{'"}}.{{Sfn|Sandage|2006|p=12}} Accordingly, the notion of failure acquired both moralistic and [[Philosophy:Individualism|individualistic]] connotations. By the late 19th century, to be a failure was to have a deficient character.{{Sfn|Sandage|2006|p=17|ps=: This 'American sense' looked upon failure as 'a moral sieve' that trapped the loafer and passed the true man through. Such ideologies fixed blame squarely on individual faults, not extenuating circumstances …}}

==In business==
A commercial failure is a [[Finance:Product (business)|product]] or company that does not reach expectations of success.

Most of the items listed below had high expectations, significant financial investments, and/or widespread publicity, but fell far short of success. Due to the subjective nature of "success" and "meeting expectations", there can be disagreement about what constitutes a "major flop".

* For flops in computer and video gaming, see list of commercial failures in computer and video gaming
* For company failures related to the 1997–2001 [[Dot-com bubble|dot-com bubble]], see [[Finance:Dot-com company|dot-com company]]
* [[Engineering:Box-office bomb|Box-office bomb]]

Sometimes, commercial failures can receive a cult following, with the initial lack of commercial success even lending a cachet of subcultural [[Social:Cool (aesthetic)|coolness]].<ref>{{Cite book|last=Hunter|first=I. Q.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2H6hDAAAQBAJ&q=%22commercial+failure%22|title=Cult Film as a Guide to Life: Fandom, Adaptation, and Identity|date=8 September 2016|publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing USA|isbn=978-1-62356-897-9|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last1=Mathijs|first1=Ernest|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rNi_DwAAQBAJ|title=The Routledge Companion to Cult Cinema|last2=Sexton|first2=Jamie|date=22 November 2019|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-317-36223-4|language=en}}</ref>

=== In marketing ===
[[Finance:Marketing|Marketing]] researchers have distinguished between outcome and process failures. An outcome failure is a failure to obtain a good or service at all; a process failure is a failure to receive the good or service in an appropriate or preferable way.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Smith |first1=Amy K. |last2=Bolton |first2=Ruth N. |last3=Wagner |first3=Janet |date=August 1999 |title=A Model of Customer Satisfaction with Service Encounters Involving Failure and Recovery |journal=[[Finance:Journal of Marketing Research|Journal of Marketing Research]] |volume=36 |issue=3 |pages=356–372 at 358 |doi=10.1177/002224379903600305 |issn=0022-2437 |s2cid=220628355}}</ref> Thus, a person who is only interested in the final outcome of an activity would consider it to be an outcome failure if the core issue has not been resolved or a core need is not met. A process failure occurs, by contrast, when, although the activity is completed successfully, the customer still perceives the way in which the activity is conducted to be below an expected standard or benchmark.

Wan and Chan note that outcome and process failures are associated with different kinds of detrimental effects to the consumer. They observe that "[a]n outcome failure involves a loss of economic resources (i.e., money, time) and a process failure involves a loss of social resources (i.e., social esteem)".<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Wan |first1=Lisa |last2=Chan |first2=Elisa |date=20 March 2019 |title=Failure is Not Fatal: Actionable Insights on Service Failure and Recovery for the Hospitality Industry |url=https://www.bu.edu/bhr/2019/03/20/failure-is-not-fatal-actionable-insights-on-service-failure-and-recovery-for-the-hospitality-industry/ |journal=Boston Hospitality Review |language=en |volume=7 |issue=1 |issn=2326-0351}}</ref>

==In education==
A failing grade is a mark or grade given to a student to indicate that they did not pass an assignment or a class. Grades may be given as numbers, letters or other symbols. 

By the year 1884, [[Organization:Mount Holyoke College|Mount Holyoke College]] was evaluating students' performance on a 100-point or [[Percentage|percentage]] scale and then summarizing those numerical grades by assigning letter grades to numerical ranges. Mount Holyoke assigned letter grades ''A'' through ''E,'' with ''E'' indicating lower than 75% performance and designating failure. The ''A''–''E'' system spread to [[Organization:Harvard University|Harvard University]] by 1890. In 1898, Mount Holyoke adjusted the grading system, adding an ''F'' grade for failing (and adjusting the ranges corresponding to the other letters). The practice of letter grades spread more broadly in the first decades of the 20th century. By the 1930s, the letter ''E'' was dropped from the system, for unclear reasons.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Schinske|first1=Jeffrey|last2=Tanner|first2=Kimberly|date=2014|title=Teaching More by Grading Less (or Differently)|journal=CBE: Life Sciences Education|volume=13|issue=2|pages=159–166|doi=10.1187/cbe.CBE-14-03-0054|issn=1931-7913|pmc=4041495|pmid=26086649}}</ref>

== In philosophy ==

Philosophers in the [[Philosophy:Analytic philosophy|analytic]] tradition have suggested that failure is connected to the notion of an omission.{{Citation needed|date=August 2023}} In [[Philosophy:Ethics|ethics]], omissions are distinguished from acts: acts involve an agent doing something; omissions involve an agent's not doing something.

Both actions and omissions may be morally significant. The classic example of a morally significant omission is one's failure to rescue someone in dire need of assistance. It may seem that one is morally [[Social:Culpability|blameworthy]] for failing to rescue in such a case.

Patricia G. Smith notes that there are two ways one can not do something: consciously or unconsciously.{{Sfn|Smith|1990|p=159}} A conscious omission is intentional, whereas an unconscious omission may be [[Social:Negligence|negligent]], but is not intentional.{{Sfn|Smith|1990|p=160}} Accordingly, Smith suggests, we ought to understand failure as involving a situation in which it is reasonable to expect a person to do something, but they do not do it—regardless of whether they intend to do it or not.{{Sfn|Smith|1990|p=162–163}}

Randolph Clarke, commenting on Smith's work, suggests that "[w]hat makes [a] failure to act an omission is the applicable [[Philosophy:Norm|norm]]".<ref>{{Cite book|last=Clarke|first=Randolph|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aog3AwAAQBAJ|title=Omissions: Agency, Metaphysics, and Responsibility|date=2 June 2014|publisher=[[Organization:Oxford University Press|Oxford University Press]]|isbn=978-0-19-934752-0|location=Oxford|pages=32|doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199347520.001.0001}}</ref> In other words, a failure to act becomes morally significant when a norm demands that some action be taken, and it is not taken.

==In science==

Scientific hypotheses can be said to fail when they lead to predictions that do not match the results found in [[Experiment|experiment]]s. Alternatively, experiments can be regarded as failures when they do not provide helpful information about nature.{{Citation needed|date=August 2023}} However, the standards of what constitutes failure are not clear-cut. For example, the [[Physics:Michelson–Morley experiment|Michelson–Morley experiment]] became the "most famous failed experiment in history" because it did not detect the motion of the Earth through the [[Physics:Luminiferous aether|luminiferous aether]] as had been expected. This failure to confirm the presence of the aether would later provide support for [[Biography:Albert Einstein|Albert Einstein]]'s [[Physics:Special theory of relativity|special theory of relativity]].<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Blum|first1=Edward K.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nFRG2UizET0C&pg=PA98|title=Mathematics of Physics and Engineering|last2=Lototsky|first2=Sergey V.|date=2006|publisher=World Scientific|isbn=978-981-256-621-8|language=en}}</ref>

''Wired'' magazine editor [[Biography:Kevin Kelly (editor)|Kevin Kelly]] explains that a great deal can be learned from things going wrong unexpectedly, and that part of science's success comes from keeping blunders "small, manageable, constant, and trackable". He uses the example of engineers and programmers who push systems to their limits, breaking them to learn about them. Kelly also warns against creating a culture that punishes failure harshly, because this inhibits a creative process, and risks teaching people not to communicate important failures with others (e.g., null results).<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.edge.org/q2011/q11_6.html |title=THE WORLD QUESTION CENTER 2011 — Page 6 |publisher=Edge.org |access-date=24 June 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131205173145/http://www.edge.org/q2011/q11_6.html |archive-date=5 December 2013 }}</ref> Failure can also be used productively, for instance to find identify ambiguous cases that warrant further interpretation.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Rettberg |first=Jill Walker |date=2022 |title=Algorithmic failure as a humanities methodology: Machine learning's mispredictions identify rich cases for qualitative analysis |journal=Big Data & Society |language=en |volume=9 |issue=2 |pages=205395172211312 |doi=10.1177/20539517221131290 |s2cid=253026358 |issn=2053-9517|doi-access=free |hdl=11250/3035859 |hdl-access=free }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Munk |first1=Anders Kristian |last2=Olesen |first2=Asger Gehrt |last3=Jacomy |first3=Mathieu |date=2022 |title=The Thick Machine: Anthropological AI between explanation and explication |journal=Big Data & Society |language=en |volume=9 |issue=1 |pages=205395172110698 |doi=10.1177/20539517211069891 |s2cid=250180452 |issn=2053-9517|doi-access=free }}</ref> When studying biases in machine learning, for instance, failure can be seen as a "''cybernetic rupture'' where pre-existing biases and structural flaws make themselves known".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Bridges |first=Lauren E |date=2021 |title=Digital failure: Unbecoming the "good" data subject through entropic, fugitive, and queer data |journal=Big Data & Society |language=en |volume=8 |issue=1 |pages=205395172097788 |doi=10.1177/2053951720977882 |s2cid=233890960 |issn=2053-9517|doi-access=free }}</ref>

== Linguistics ==
The term "miserable failure" was popularized as a result of a widely known "[[Social:Google bombing|Google bombing]]", which caused [[Software:Google Search|Google search]]es for the term to turn up the White House biography of George W. Bush.<ref name="snopes">{{cite web|url=http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/google.asp|title=Someone Set Us Up The Google Bomb.|author1=Mikkelson, Barbara |author2=Mikkelson, David P. |date=13 August 2007|website=[[Philosophy:Snopes.com|Snopes.com]]|access-date=9 August 2009}}</ref>

=== Internet memes and "fail" ===
During the early 2000s, the term ''fail'' began to be used as an interjection in the context of [[Social:Internet meme|Internet meme]]s. The interjection ''fail'' and the superlative form '''''epic fail''''' expressed derision and ridicule for mistakes deemed "eminently mockable".<ref name="fail_NYT" /> According to linguist Ben Zimmer, the most probable origin of this usage is ''[[Software:Blazing Star|Blazing Star]]'' (1998), a Japanese video game whose [[Software:Game over|game over]] message was translated into English as "You fail it".<ref name="fail_NYT">{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/magazine/09FOB-onlanguage-t.html?_r=3&ref=magazine&pagewanted=all|title=How Fail Went From Verb to Interjection.|last=Zimmer|first=Ben|date=7 August 2009|work={{wipe|The New York Times}}|access-date=9 August 2009|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170427062231/http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/magazine/09FOB-onlanguage-t.html?_r=3&ref=magazine&pagewanted=all|archive-date=27 April 2017}}</ref><ref name="origins">{{cite news|last=Schofield|first=Jack|title=All your FAIL are belong to us.|newspaper={{wipe|The Guardian}}|date=17 October 2008|url=https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2008/oct/17/2|access-date=9 August 2009|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131204192951/http://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2008/oct/17/2|archive-date=4 December 2013}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |first=Christopher |last=Beam |title=Epic Win |url=http://www.slate.com/id/2202262/ |work=Slate |date=15 October 2008 |access-date=21 August 2009 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090825232552/http://www.slate.com/id/2202262 |archive-date=25 August 2009 }}</ref> The comedy website ''[[Social:Fail Blog|Fail Blog]]'', launched in January 2008, featured photos and videos captioned with "fail" and its variations.<ref name="fail_NYT" /> The #fail [[Hashtag|hashtag]] is used on the microblogging site [[Company:Twitter|Twitter]] to indicate contempt or displeasure, and the image that formerly accompanied the message that the site was overloaded is referred to as the "fail whale".<ref>{{cite news |last=Malik |first=Asmaa |date=24 April 2010 |title=Joy in the failure of others has gone competitive |work=Montreal Gazette |url=https://montrealgazette.com/technology/failure+others+gone+competitive/2940572/story.html |access-date=21 May 2010}}{{Dead link|date=October 2010|bot=H3llBot}}</ref>

==See also==
{{div col}}
* {{annotated link|Engineering:Catastrophic failure}}
* {{annotated link|Cascading failure}}
* {{annotated link|Error}}
* {{annotated link|Fail-safe}}
* {{annotated link|Engineering:Failure analysis}}
* {{annotated link|Failure rate}}
* {{annotated link|Finance:Market failure}}
* {{annotated link|Philosophy:Murphy's law}}
* {{annotated link|Physics:Normal Accidents}}
* {{annotated link|Setting up to fail}}
* {{annotated link|Single point of failure}}
* {{annotated link|Engineering:System accident}}
{{div col end}}

==References==
{{reflist}}

'''Other sources'''
* {{Cite book|last=Sandage|first=Scott A.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bz9tidQ6oNsC|title=Born Losers: A History of Failure in America|date=2006|publisher=Harvard University Press|isbn=978-0-674-04305-3|location=Cambridge, Massachusetts|oclc=436295765|}}
* {{Cite journal|last=Smith|first=Patricia G.|date=1990|title=Contemplating Failure: The Importance of Unconscious Omission|journal=Philosophical Studies|volume=59|issue=2|pages=159–176|doi=10.1007/BF00368204|jstor=4320126|s2cid=170763594|issn=0031-8116}}

==Further reading==
* Perrow, Charles. ''Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies''. New York: Basic Books, 1983. Paperback reprint, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999. {{ISBN|0-691-00412-9}}

==External links==
* [http://www.ochshorndesign.com/cornell/writings/failures.html Designing Building Failures]
* {{Citation |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/magazine/09FOB-onlanguage-t.html |title=How Fail Went From Verb to Interjection |work=The New York Times Magazine |date=7 August 2009 |first=Ben |last=Zimmer |}}.
* [http://www.shippai.org/index1.php Association for the Study of Failure] from Japan


[[Category:Reliability engineering]]

{{Sourceattribution|Failure}}