Tag: Real world math
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
Monster stopped killing. GOOD FUCKING RIDDANCE.
Paul Unehrlich, the philosophical source of total genocide, finally stopped killing. Unehrlich persuaded all governments and corporations that life is exponential. Corporations loved him because their God, the Dow, is exponential by definition. Infinite orgasm for billionaires. Governments loved him because an exponential happens when you eliminate negative feedback. Governments require open-loop systems because open-loop…
-
π Day
Keeping up a tradition… π Day again! Since I’m talking typography lately, I’ll hash and rehash a couple items from 2019. = = = = = Thinking about Trump as Pied Piper. When the metaphor first appeared in those DNC emails I didn’t quite understand it. After learning that Trump is Roy Cohn’s protege, I…
-
Used to be called 1
Via Protos, the big digital betting casinos like Kalshi and Polymarket are making profits from bets on assassinations. Some of the bets are phrased indirectly, but everyone knows what it means. You win when a politician is killed. It appears that many of the bettors are politicians with an obvious motive. Before the Wall Street…
-
Worse than Altman’s eyeball
Noticed via New Scientist, which properly considered it as a candidate for the next Ig-Nobels. You thought Altman’s soul-stealing Eyeball was intrusive? How about a new industry devoted to wearable fart detectors? The fartup sees an oppootunity in the well-known hianus of infartmation. Most people aren’t aware of their actual fartquency**, either under or overstating…
-
Moore’s Law? No, Less’s Law.
I’ve always figured my own income tax. A long time ago when I had a circle of friends, I often figured taxes for friends because I enjoyed the work. Now I hate it. Why did I enjoy it then and hate it now? Easy. Paper vs computer. Even for a relatively simple situation, tax involves…
-
Says more about humans than aliens
This cartoon is splendid. It tells us how Altman thinks of himself. More importantly it reveals our basic brain structure. A single little 0 doesn’t cause dissonance. We feel it as nothing and we calculate it as nothing. A BIG zero like 0,000,000,000,000 feels BIG, even though our language processor tells us it’s still nothing.…
-
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…
Polistra's Mill 