Tag: Real world math
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It’s not an algorithm.
We constantly bitch about the obnoxious results of algorithms on the web. New thought: The most obnoxious shit happens when there ISN’T an algorithm. An intelligence, whether you call it a brain or an algorithm or a program, does three things: 1. Take input from the world. Different types of intelligence take input in different…
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Happy 68th, Sputnik!
I’ve saluted Sputnik many times, focusing on a different topic each time. Today is the 68th birthday. I’ll repeat the 2021 version, which seems most appropriate now. = = = = = Browsing through more of the ACM magazine. From Nov 1957, a remarkably sane and objective IMMEDIATE response to Sputnik. Author Edmund Berkeley gets…
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Rererereprint on real value
Reprinting this for the thousandth time after mentioning the Soviet reliance on REAL VALUE in previous item. This one piece encompasses everything I know and believe. = = = = = START EVERYTHING: Robert Shiller is arguing that economics pays too much attention to theories and numbers. Perfectly correct. He’s also arguing that real economies…
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Hard currency?
The ex-Soviet auto history podcaster often mentions that trade between the US side of the world and the Soviet side was difficult because the ruble wasn’t a ‘hard currency’. I used to hear that phrase in the news and didn’t question it at the time. The news told us Soviet money wasn’t hard, so it…
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Too much adaptation
Press release at Spokane News: (Condensed) On Tuesday, September 16th, 2025, after a months-long investigation, DEA, ATF, local police seized 50,208 pills from a defendant at a Centralia gas station. … Lab tests revealed the pills did not contain fentanyl, instead they were carfentanil and acetaminophen. Carfentanil is a synthetic opioid originally developed to tranquilize…
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SubSPAC
SPACs are money-laundering devices for new entries in the stock crime index. The sole purpose of a SPAC is to evade the few remaining regulations on initial offerings of crime shares. When a fake company wants to enter the NASDAQ Murder Index but knows it’s too blatantly bankrupt to get past the weak rules, it…
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Ponzi is a fake argument
Too many arguments sink into irrelevance when one side insists A is a Ponzi scheme and the other side says it isn’t. Bitcoin and Social Security are both called Ponzi at times. The definition of Ponzi is much more nuanced and fuzzy than we usually think. Intention is important. Two classic examples show the real…
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Grange beats Orange
A nice contrast to yesterday’s piece on tribes NOT doing the right thing. In part of the Plains the Mutual spirit still functions. Unsurprising. This is Mennonite territory, Farmers Co-op territory, and Grange territory. High plains farmers are accustomed to working together. Via NiemanLab: High Plains Radio, a collective of small NPR stations in irrigated-circle…
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Couple of meanders
Meander 1. An article at Curbside Classic pictured the S&H Green Stamp dispenser that used to be common in gas stations and grocery stores. The clerk dialed up the quantity of stamps justified by your purchase, and a string of stamps emerged. Why didn’t thieves just dial up some dollars? Easy answer. Pro criminals need…
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Vector fields
Vector fields are a math tool used in graphing and understanding sets of forces or complex patterns. Vector fields have proved useful with brain networks. Older forms of measurement were also vectorial, with complex measures like metes and bounds forming vector fields to measure farm fields. A vector is an arrow representing a movement and…
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Oddity
Just noticed an odd contradiction. The way we learn math in school is NOT the way math is really done in business. We learned each addition as a single process with a single answer. 3 + 4 = 7 Real math by mechanical processes, from the abacus to the Addiator to adding machines to cash…
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X et XII, pars I de II
Discussions and school lessons on Roman arithmetic are solely about integers. In reality the Romans, and the medieval merchants who continued the tradition, handled fractions all the time using a sophisticated notation. Integers operated on a pair of 5s, not a simple base 10. Fractions operated on a pair of 6s, not a simple base…
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X et XII, pars II de II
After covering the Addiator I was curious to see if there were similar devices in earlier times. Rome used primitive abacuses, just stones sliding in grooves on wood. Not really a device. Googling medieval abacus led solely to this gadget: There’s only one source for the picture and description, a 1682 encyclopedia of ancient things…
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Waggles and rods
= = = = = = VECTOR MEASUREMENT PART 1 OF 2 = = = = = Following from the Medieval Metrology series last month. Medieval land measures were vector, not rectangular. The base unit was time and work, not distance and weight. With land as with money, the base was one day of work…
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Waggles and stars
= = = = = VECTOR MEASUREMENT PART 2 OF 2 = = = = = Continued from Part 1 on medieval land area. Surveying is a mechanized way of doing the waggle dance. It includes all three dimensions when measuring the height of a distant building or tree or mountain. I tried a real…
Polistra's Mill 