GIGO
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Garbage In, Garbage Out (abbreviated to GIGO) is an aphorism in the field of computer science. It refers to the fact that computers, unlike humans, will unquestioningly process the most nonsensical of input data and produce nonsensical output. It was most popular in the early days of computing, but has fallen out of use as programs have become more sophisticated and now usually have checks built in to reject improper input.
GIGO is usually said in response to users who complain that a program did not "do the right thing" when given imperfect input or otherwise mistreated in some way. It is also commonly used to describe failures in human decision making due to faulty, incomplete, or imprecise data. For example, a badly written TeX document will look bad because the user did not correctly typeset the TeX source properly. This instance of GIGO could be described in a similar vein to WYSIWYG - what you see is what you get.
Another, more recent, meaning of GIGO is Garbage In, Gospel Out. This phrase is a sardonic comment on the human tendency to accept the results from computer systems with unquestioning faith. An example of this blind-faith GIGO mentality is to believe that your work, stored in a computer, will be there whenever you need it even though you never perform data backup or virus scan.
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- This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, which is licensed under the GFDL.