Annals of Error Messages

Peter Rukavina

Here’s an error message thrown by a NOAA application:

Error: Not Enough Data Available to be Displayed
There are less than 5 observations available for the selected parameter. Attempting to graph this data may give the impression that no data is available, so building of the graph was aborted.

I understand completely what the error message means, mostly because it sounds like the kind of error message that a programmer (like me) would write to describe what had happened. But it does strike me as rather user-hostile.

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Photo of Peter RukavinaI am . I am a writer, letterpress printer, and a curious person.

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