Tag: Real world math
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Ranch and range reprint
Something reminded me of the word ranch. Decided to look up the etymology, since it doesn’t sound like other terms for land. It comes from the French military se ranger, meaning to pitch camp or set up a location, related to arrange. Range, of course, has dozens of meanings in math, biology and surveying. The…
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Plutonism vs Platonism
20 years ago the platonists kicked Pluto out of the planetary pantheon. They’re still defending the ruinous decision, still oblivious to the need for trust and communication. = = = = = START ASSHOLE: For people who absorbed that version of the solar system as children, the 2006 decision required replacing something that had been…
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Alligator / 0
The AI demons keep preaching about TheSingularityTM. They’re inverting the meaning to attract satanic investors. In math a singularity is a point on a graph where you can’t figure an answer. The result is heading toward infinity, or toward 0/0, or some other value that can’t be calculated or handled or conceived. When a real…
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Simple measuring tool
The current fad of AI quibbling strongly resembles Walker Percy’s smartphone apocalypse in ‘Love in the Ruins’, the perfect dystopia for our times, written in 1971. The devil invents a little hand-carried imaginator that can see into everyone’s head. He distributes a bunch of them for free, then watches the accusations turn into a war.…
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Rights and the Moore method
Last month I lambasted the Moore Method of math teaching, after seeing that my old calc teacher was famous for advocating it. The Moore Method was just a stricter version of normal American math teaching. It focused SOLELY on axioms and theorems while fiercely rejecting any hint of real world applications. Today somebody is praising…
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Can’t be Prime Day!
Somebody was saying that today is Prime Day, and recommending that people should celebrate Anti-Prime Day instead. First thought: Huh? Today isn’t Prime Day. There aren’t any Prime Days this year. The last Prime Day was 11/29/23. Today would be a generic Anti-Prime Day, but not the best. The best recent Anti-Prime Day was 9/16/25.…
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Creating vs destroying value
Rehashed and condensed from 2023. = = = = = While feebly attempting to “think” about REAL VALUE vs FAKE VALUE in banking, I noticed a basic fact. So far I can’t find any mention of this basic fact in online discussions of the subject, but the word combinations are probably not hitting the right…
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Bucky was a fucking idiot
Reprinting and adding from 2016 because I’m in a mathy mood. = = = = = Cool people have always admired Bucky Fuller, and academic mathematicians spend lots of time dealing with optimal packings of shapes in space. Mathy packings always have a Bucky flavor. Fancy polyhedra jumbled in fancy ways. In THEORY a sphere…
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Kirby and the Moore Method
I mentioned my freshman calc teacher Bill Kirby in previous item. I didn’t know much about him. I only knew his attitude and method represented everything I hated about American math teaching. In my own later teaching and courseware I’ve been trying to counteract those bad American tendencies. Found Kirby’s obituary. Nothing about politics, nothing…
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Division again
Previous mathy item was a topic that should have been familiar to me but wasn’t. I had to think about it for the first time, and I’m not satisfied with my thinking. This topic is thoroughly familiar but still benefited from a rehash. A peculiar online argument about Marx’s math is raging. The usual sides…
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Dividing by a fraction
I just finished the latest stage of ADA courseware with an especially hard and fast race to the end under pressure, and my mind needs to work on SOMETHING DIFFERENT for a while! This article on math teaching caught my attention. I used to teach math as part of teaching electronics. Fortunately we didn’t need…
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Should have the same argument
From Hieber on linguistics, How to use a dictionary: ❌ “What’s the One True Meaning™ of this word?” ❌ “What’s the One True Pronunciation™ of this word?” ✅ “What are some different ways this word is used?” = = = = = Prescriptive vs Descriptive is a VERY old argument in language, and it was…
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Before wipers
Why did windshield wipers start relatively late in the development of cars? Partly because closed cars with glass windshields were late. But windshields were common for 10 years before wipers became standard. Visors were an adequate solution for quite a while, just as porches and roof overhangs are adequate for houses. Some visors were extensions…
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Missing the main point as always
Via RealClear, a sane and sensible article on school homework in math classes. Education is all about fads and fashions. Trends come and go, but parents consistently hate homework and cheer when a school abandons it. The article says it’s hard to quantify whether homework helps. Naturally mathy types get good grades without spending time…
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