Sensor net­works are all about uncer­tainty: if the sensor says it’s 20°C  out there, then it might be 20°C plus-or-minus half a degree or so (lim­ited pre­ci­sion); or it might be some dif­fer­ent tem­per­at­ure, and the sensor’s just repor­ted a duff value for some reason (lim­ited accur­acy). By con­trast, com­puters most def­in­itely aren’t about uncer­tainty, a fact enshrined in the fam­ous maxim “garbage in, garbage out”. What does this mean for our abil­ity to build really large, robust and flex­ible sensor networks?

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