Tag: Real world math
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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,…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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.…
Polistra's Mill 