Actually, I think I'm missing the reference. Who is Walter White?

my guess is from some teevee show I've never seen.

in which a dying chemist becomes a meth manufacturer in order to make enough money for his family to live on once he dies. He becomes a ruthless giant in the "industry" and operates under the pseudonym of Heisenberg.

Of course, since I haven't watched the show in quite a while, far more than this has surely gone on.

edit: "I'm uncertain" -- having now read the other replies -- good one.

The uncertainty principle in physics asserts that there is a limit to the precision that two properties can be known concurrently. For the properties of momentum and position, measuring momentum of a particle limits the precision of the position.

I compare this scenario to trying to count kids when they are running around the yard. Walter is unable to precisely gauge the momentum and position of his family, Jesse, et al.

The Uncertainty principle is also called the Heisenberg Principle, after Werner Heisenberg. I imagine that White understood the irony of his quest for precision in his operations and the fact that the uncertainty principle holds that other equally important properties will be uncertain.

Werner Heisenberg was instrumental in developing what we know today as quantum mechanics. So one reason was because Heisenberg is a famous scientist. But perhaps the biggest reason is because Heisenberg developed what is known as the Uncertainty Principle.

And didn't it have something to do with when he started wearing that hat? I'm thinking of the scene when he confronted the gang members and blew that building up. Was that when it happened?

Figured he was going to go down in flames anyway, but, thought better of it. Recalling his past, the idea struck him to go with the man who who quantified " shit happens". And this is true because you read it on the internet...