In computer science, Error avalanche refers to how one small problem can become compounded until it eventually becomes a very large one.
For example, when if the output of one function is the output of another, then small round-off errors in the first function can produce much larger errors in the second. If the second function were fed into the third, the problem could grow even larger, until the values produces are worthless.
Another example is in compiling source code. One minor syntactical error early on in the code can produce large numbers of percieved errors later.
