"From about 1990, a group in the U.S. came up with the idea of just treating it as a statistical problem -- more of a machine learning problem where you essentially ignore linguistics and just look for patterns in data, " he said.

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To be clear, the problem is not with numerical and statistical methods, it is with their blind application in the absence of reason.

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Since the mid-1950s, there has been a massive effort by international agencies in co-operation with national statistical offices to deal with the kind of problem he raises.

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The unreliability - or "statistical variability" - of chips is a problem that many researchers were trying to deal with, said Professor Asen Asenov from the Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering at the University of Glasgow.

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