Yes, balloons pop, but mechanical systems fail or jam (due to foreign matter).

I have had interviews where the questions asked were not in my forte. I studied math, but worked as programmer for most of my life. At my university, I remember seeing certain classes taught for different audiences. Numerical analysis taught for CS majors was completely different than that taught for math majors. CS people devoted a lot of time to computational complexity formulations for various sort algorithms and approximations to those. Math numerical analysis chose different problems to study. Even year to year, the math problems studied varied based on the professor.
Take differential equations. DE for engineers emphasized recognizing and memorizing certain route formulations for solving "standard classical problems." DE for mathematicians involved heavy theorem proving and esoteric questions like "existence solutions". Engineers would laugh, saying why the hell would we need to know that? Well, the answer is simple. Most of the easy differential equations that "you can solve" can be solved by looking it up in a book or these days, via Google. However, in the real world, you will most likely encounter fresh ill-posed "one of a kind" DEs. Another example happened when an engineer asked me help with solving sets of DE when the Space Shuttle's robotic arm hit an object. The way that we formulated the solution then was completely wrong. To deal with the impulse event, we switched from a high order RK method so a lower order approximation after impact.
When I took my GREs in math, I bombed my DEs part. Well, the reason is that all of the questions asked focused on the Advanced Nonsense taught to EEs and not on stuff which I was taught.
Years later, I had the exact same problem during an interview with Microsoft. I didn't do well because the sort of questions asked came from the CS school rather than the math school. I don't mind that, but I resented him because he just thought that the interviewer dismissed me as an idiot or fraud because I did not know the answers to his questions. Had he said, "Well, you just MIGHT know your shit, but it is not the shit that we do here, and I do not have a way of evaluating your skill set," I would have accepted that compromise.

A serious study would fold in far more information, which ironically is accessible.
It would be interesting if I could enter my transcripts for college as well as grades which could be used for "future predictions". Even things like certificates and "specific job skills" could be added to really drill down to estimation. Moreover, there are "test companies" which could evaluate one's knowledge of Java or C#, which could be tied into a knowledge management and evaluation system. The problem is to get enough statistics entered as well as insuring that the data is correct. The other issue is to make sure that one is not comparing apples to oranges. An intro CS course at MIT is not the same as one at Harvard Extension School taught by U. Lowell's finest who could not get a real day job and have time "to teach".

My favorite for this is an oldie but goodie. Macsyma or now Maxima. Best of all, it is free.
Moreover, it should be the algorithms and techniques which are and should be important. Most of us can cobble together a program with a GUI. I spent a lot of time studying things like Kalman Filters, and have concluded that there is no such thing as one size fits all or that it is possible or even desirable to parametrize additional features and forecast enhancements. There are a lot of formulations which lead to implementation differences which spill all over the code.
Recently, I was reading Mandelbrot's work on chaos. It seems that the biggest critiques of new formations for modeling chaos are that it is not easy to standardize the representations of the models.
Boo-hoo, mommy, my math and philosophical formulations break down and reality is really strange.

In an age where companies collect and trade info about customers, it seems only fair that customers should be able to trade info about companies and governments. I hate it when my bank sends info about me to their financial investment partners. Banking and investing are separate business, however there is money to be made off suckers and to avoid people with financial or legal problems.
The most egregious of these are doctors, who recommend unnecessary procedures just because you have the money to afford them. A patient puts his trust in a doctor, yet it seems as if oftentimes this trust is misplaced. I noticed that Angie's List no longer maintains reviews on doctors. They must have been sued into silence.
The other day, Fox news ran a story about a lawyer who was charging his client money for sleeping with her. Funny story, but it would have been even funnier had they released the name of the lawyer. Whatever happened to free speech and defending to the death our right for it.

you posted>> No, businesspeople will not take a Hipster seriously when this Hipster emails thousands or tens of thousands of other employees, and accidentally includes some customers, begging them to support her social justice cause fight of the day. Businesspeople have real work to get done while at work, rather than wasting time supporting some sort of social deviancy.

I don't know if this is a Southern thing, but I as a programmer have been inundated with idiots trying to push religion on me. Some God damn idiot tries to talk religion with me as if he were to make a difference in my understanding. Sometimes I reply with a remark like, "Religion is the opium of the masses", "Jesus Christ was a Political Criminal" or "Religion is a brainwashing of children and a form of unbanned child abuse." which just infuriates the idiots. People with an IQ in the single digit seems to think that they hold the truth.
The other ones are the right wingers who feel the need to spread the latest thought inspired by Rush Limbahl. As business people, they adapted their political belief which helped them get promoted.

After 9/11, the total cost of liability was capped significantly lower than before. Just another example of how the poor subsidize the rich in a fair capitalistic system. Congratulations after 2000 years of economic progress and intellect, we have a society with the worst of capitalism and the worst of communism. I don't think even Karl Marx thought of that one. Actually, there is a name for this system, "Feudalism." The king and nobles are always right and judged in a court of their peers. The commoners are judged by the noblemen.

Doesn't consider the probability of an disaster multiplied by the cost of the incident.
Just look at Japan's Fukushima disaster.

I'll gladly pay you for 2 hamburgers tomorrow for one hamburger today. -Wimpy on Popeye 1970.
Unfortunately for me, I was offered this sort of deal by my boss. However, my boss fired me when I came around to collect. This sort of culture exists on Wall Street. Lots of people dangle carrots in front of you, but when it comes time to collect, all promises are forgotten. I remember a friend who worked for Shersom-Lerhman Brothers in the 1989. Her boss got a big bonus for his previous years "work", and she was shorted her salary on the last two weeks on the job just before bankruptcy.

Years ago, in "National Lampoon," they had all the country's gestures for FY. Starting from the American middle finger to the Italian right arm scooping up cradled in the left arm.

I had a back flow device inspected. This stupid thing requires a $500 tester and $200 annual calibrations and additional certifications. While as I agree that these things are needed to prevent contaminating the water supply, I think paying some Joe $75 for 5 min of work is way too much. I would be willing to have the city send someone out to do it. I am sure that the economy of scale is such that if we could have someone do this for $5, but then, the local city council has family who depends on my over priced fees.

I wonder if the $120,000 for petroleum-engineering is not due more to the fact that the jobs tend to be located in harsh climates and remote locations. Yes, the waitresses working in a North Dakota boom town might not be pulling in big bucks, but might in fact be a guy as few women feel safe in these towns. I hear that these rough neck natural gas sites tend to be lawless and full of hidden surprises & toxic spills and fire hazards. I don't know if you will find the girl you want to marry there, if you are interested. Your wife might worry about getting raped going out for groceries. Housing is made up of used FEMA trailers and living amongst people who will rob you at night. The locals know that you have a petroleum degree, so they will charge you more for services.
Petroleum-engineering work tends to be in the Middle east. I have a friend who worked in Abi Dhabi, who said that his wife could not stand to live there, despite the affluence. Maybe the Middle Eastern women learned to put up with outright sexist shit, but she could not. The cops were there to shake you down, not to help you.

I have heard many comments that maybe those rides are unsafe. Well, I challenge that as I once had a ride in a taxi where the driver admitted to being stoned. But not paying him probably was not the thing to do if you didn't want him to come back to settle the score.
But it seems as if all the talk about reducing red tape only applies to businesses and not individuals. Most businesses exist because of red tape to force you to use them. My kid's class parties can only be supplied by store made cakes and snacks. I sort of agree that you might not want to risk causing upset stomachs in kids, but it strikes me as a bit overboard. More kids get hurt via bully violence, but somehow that is not addressed.

Actually, time to fill facebook with lots of people who look sort of like you. I am sure that if you fill it with people who don't look like you, the algorithm will do a good job of discerning them. However, if you put these up, maybe you'll just end up fine tuning the algorithms!

Well, Wilbert Wright died on his third flight. I am sure that the air travel industry had some pretty bad stats. In the 1950's airline attendants were required to train in First Aid and the uniforms looked a lot like nurse's, something that was not just happenstance.