Tag: Real world math
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How to beat a lottery
NewScientist has an interesting bit of mathy history about beating a lottery. It takes a lot of work and usually some inside help to buy all the tickets and guarantee a win. Success also needs careless design of the lottery itself. The article lists three times when gangs succeeded, at least partly. The first was…
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Facta
One discussion of Prevost’s background mentioned a school whose motto is Facta non verba. Google doesn’t find the reference now, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t AI-hallucinate it. The Endarkenment inverted the meaning of factum. In Latin a factum was simply a completed task, a got-r-done**. Now we think facts are authorized descriptions of the…
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Who’s the welfare bum?
Following on earlier item about Elon’s “efficiency” crusade, where I showed that Social Security, which Elon wants to destroy for “inefficiency”, is infinitely more efficient than Elon. Elon also complains, along with all Repooflicans in all decades, that federal agencies shouldn’t get any money from taxes. Rich fuckheads shouldn’t be nominally required to pay taxes,…
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Deserves a serious answer
Question in the bitcoin-skeptic section of Reddit, titled ‘A genuine good faith question’. = = = = = START QUOTE: I’m a huge crypto skeptic. But I see that a core principle here is the belief that blockchain as a concept or technology (unrelated to BTC) is useless or a “scam”. My question is, why…
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More random meandering
Thinking about AI’s trouble with simple binary logic. It shouldn’t happen in a computer, since computers ARE simple binary logic all the way through. But real life is mostly analog, mostly positive or negative CHANGES from a center. There have been attempts to capture this in mechanical logic, but most don’t really work. In college…
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Random stupid mathy thought
Noticed a crash report in Spokane News: South Sullivan and South Ball Dr, Vehicle Collision Reported. Inevitably some smartass will comment: South and South can’t intersect! Well, the smartass is wrong. Street geometry is sometimes euclidean and sometimes elliptic. Parallel streets often intersect. Here’s the intersection mentioned, way out in the East Valley. Ball is…
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Good woke, reprinted
Linked in previous, worth a reprint. = = = = = REPRINT FROM 2019: This academic movement is more important and more valid than it sounds. First, how it sounds: = = = = = START QUOTE: Since apartheid ended in 1994, South Africa’s universities have struggled to transform themselves, leading to escalating student protests…
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Foy Rebellion reprint
Linked in previous item about math pope, worth a reprint. = = = = = REPRINT FROM 2022: Yesterday I was discussing the cultural IMPERATIVE to re-employ ordinary men after WW2. France implemented a similar IMPERATIVE after it recovered from the 1789 revolution, which turned its demonic vision of “science” into a god of war…
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Is Elon more efficient than SS?
This 1962 educational film about Social Security is a nicely produced story, by educational film standards anyway. It tells about SS by following a young reporter who visits the administration with her grandpa, to see how SS works for young people and old people. At one point the film mentions that modern computers enable SSA…
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We need equipoise
I linked these items as examples of professional criminals misusing math as a culprit. Rehashing both together. = = = = = START 2022 REHASH: Bitcoiners constantly say they’re letting math rule. Math is god, math is supreme, math is unarguable. Nope. They’ve kicked math out of the house. Math is always formed in equations.…
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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…
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Random thought, good question
The 1959 union film on pipefitters learning to build nuclear reactors led to an irrelevant sidebar. The narrator is emphasizing the complexity of the physics and math needed for reactors. The plumbers had to learn a new vocabulary, a whole new way of thinking. “Specific heat, latent heat, sine, cosine, tangent, cotangent, secant and cosecant.”…
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What’s he really doing?
Burge is discussing the relative political knowledge of different religions. Unsurprisingly the richer groups had the most knowledge. I commented: Rich people NEED to know who controls Congress because rich people can influence politicians. Non-rich don’t need to know because we recognize that we have no influence. Voting is a Machiavellian gimmick. I need to…
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Powell holds the line.
Powell is holding steady to support HONEST business and REAL economics. He’s clearly sending a message to Trump and Elon that he won’t back down to satisfy Elon’s endless universe-consuming greed. Trump is NYC. Trump is Wall Street. Trump wants ZIRP and QE to return so his allies can finish bombing the country down to…
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Materials and Methods
Following on previous item that mentioned the primacy of MATERIALS and METHODS. I’ve hammered this subject repeatedly. Here’s one of the better hammers from 2014. = = = = = START 2014 REPRINT: Reading another stupid “study” on improving nutrition, it struck me that Portion and Serving are extremely peculiar units. They are new instances…
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