> Things like Math and engineering are all rigid and rules based
Depends where in math, in things like particle physics things get all wibbly wobbly is my cat dead or alive. In things like engineering quite often what you're dealing with is probability based, but you just stack the deck so far in your favor the probability is 1.
As they say, building a bridge that doesn't fall down is easy. Building a bridge that barely doesn't fall down is much harder.
Every scientist does that at some point. I've easily crossed my fingers and hoped numerous times that code I'd written would work, especially on the first time. Even more rewarding in the superstition when the project is hard, and you're a bit daffy at the end.
It's a human thing.
Surely Feynman made jested comments before running experiments. I'm sure some digging in his wonderful books and letters will find many examples.
A lot of experimental and applied physics operates this way. If you are synthesizing material, for example, it takes a lot of time and effort to get high yields of what you want. Before that your processes can be very probabilistic.
In fact, just finished listening to a talk where a experimentalist was talking about how to get the fabrication yields of superconducting qubits from currently low double digit to 99.99+.
Biology is messy at a macro level is all I'm saying. I don't need a hundred people butting in saying "butt aschully phsyix and code is also messy and harder at a quantum level." I know. We know.
Depends where in math, in things like particle physics things get all wibbly wobbly is my cat dead or alive. In things like engineering quite often what you're dealing with is probability based, but you just stack the deck so far in your favor the probability is 1.
As they say, building a bridge that doesn't fall down is easy. Building a bridge that barely doesn't fall down is much harder.