| Yeah, I agree. This is one of the worst slides I've ever seen. A few things I'd add to the above. - The title is extremely unclear: are they supposed to be conservative in their beliefs about the risks (i.e., to not believe that the tile got penetrated), or are they supposed to be conservative in their behavior about the consequences (i.e., reduce risks by not re-entering the damn shuttle)? - wtf does "overpredicted" mean? That's the second largest font, and it has no visible meaning? - They don't even attempt to estimate the speed that the foam was traveling. They just said that it depends on speed and mass, but they make no suggestion of the speed. - Nor do they attempt to draw boundaries on the possible speeds. Could they have fit a line on the test data and at least given a range of speeds that were clearly dangerous? I don't think this is merely bad presentation design, however. This feels like someone was afraid to stick their necks out in a bureaucracy, and hence didn't give the managers enough information because there were some error bars around it. |
Honestly, it reads to me as being along the lines of "overestimated" - and in this sentence would mean "reality wasn't as bad as our predictions, so we have a lot more leeway than we thought".