Tag: Real world math
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New form of address?
I was thinking about Spokane’s unusual ‘chiral’ street address system. Most places decide even/odd in a static cartesian way. For instance, Enid has even on the north side of all horizontal streets and the west side of all vertical streets. The Spokane rule is more dynamic and polar, same for horizontal and vertical and diagonal.…
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Happy 25th, Y2K!
Somebody mentioned the 25th anniversary of the Y2K mess. The problem was genuine but somewhat limited. Media panicators and provocateurs turned it into a full nuclear catastrophe. Provocateurs on the fake opposite side insisted it was much ado over nothing. The reality was a LOT of hard work by real programmers to avoid a serious…
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Math teacher’s joke
Seen on Quora. A math teacher met one of his former students in a parking lot. The student parked his Lamborghini next to the teacher’s old Chevy. The surprised teacher said to him: “How can you own a car like that? You were a lousy student.” The ex-student replied: “You see this office building? I…
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Why I like Quora
I’ve switched most of my time-wasting from Substack to Quora, because (1) Quora is subject based, not forceful. Quora feeds you more of what you like and less of what you don’t like. Substack refuses to set up subject areas and insists on hammering you with the same damn shit no matter how often you…
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What’s happening? Oh.
This article is another postgame analysis of the “election”. Not especially interesting, too much focus on fine details of redistricting and population trends for my taste. The graph halfway down is far more interesting. Hard to interpret at first, until I realized it’s a parametric graph. The lines zigzag all over the place, sometimes backward…
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Tired of Platonists
More point-missing by Platonists: = = = = = START QUOTE: In his new book, Science After Babel, David Berlinski expands on his explanation of the development and significance of algorithms, a subject he first examined in The Advent of the Algorithm. Berlinski writes, “The calculus and the rich body of mathematical analysis to which…
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Whoda thunk it?
Actors get it. The rest of the public sphere, including “independent” journalists, doesn’t get it. Whoda thunk it? Hollywood understands the world better than anyone else with a public voice? I certainly never thunk it until a few months ago when I heard the Hollywood types at the Ankler talking plain truth about “the” “virus”.…
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Another pop, another 2019 reprint
Another 2019 reprint, this time with a new thought appended. = = = = = START REPRINT: KSHS has resumed adding new items regularly. One of the new items, a store ledger, triggered curiosity which led to a much more interesting older item. A ledger from the store that was outfitting fur traders in the…
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The first metricator
An incidental mention in an old Inland Printer led to this strange book. The American Accomptant, by Chauncey Lee, pub 1797 in Vermont. Lee was trying to metricate everything, and he succeeded with money. The rest of his proposal didn’t get anywhere. He distinguished Vulgar measures from his proposed Federal measures. In each case he…
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Vector thinking 2
While writing previous item about lots and maps and houses, I asked “What if maps were done as vec…. The answer came before I finished thinking the question. Maps WERE done by vectors until quite recently. Metes and bounds was strictly vectorial, and it closely resembled the newly discovered bee vectors. The example given by…
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Vector thinking
Following the bees… Nikki Haley is using an old political platitude while claiming to be non-platitudinous. Bring us together! Uniter, not divider! She seems to mean it, but she’s not dancing about it, not giving us the vector to the honey or the terrain we can expect along the way to the honey. We can…
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Be your own magnet
Lately I’ve been trying to expand the analog side of my life, after retracting into a digital shell during the hottest part of the NAZI TORTURE. I was functioning in OBEYING ALL ORDERS VERBATIM SIR! NAME RANK AND SERIAL NUMBER SIR! mode. Now I’m trying to recapture the analog/digital proportion that I had before the…
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And that brings us
Gary Smith is treading outside of economics territory and measuring Life, but he hasn’t quite crossed the boundary yet. He’s showing how log vs linear graphing can aid or obscure your understanding of a topic. It’s a hugely important point, and deeply familiar in acoustics and speech and neurology. His first attempt made a linear…
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Right about problem, wrong about solution
This discussion of college loans gets one big point right. Major universities are hedge funds with an apprentice program for future hedgies attached. That’s all. Demons training demons. The discussion misses the PERMANENCE of this situation. Colleges were FOUNDED for this sole purpose. Nothing has changed for 1000 fucking years. At one time the A&M…
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Gosbank is the answer
Lots of pointless fingerpointing about the bank failures. R blames D for the ESG crap, D blames R for a deregulation during Trump. The ultimate cause is a total lack of discipline when money is free. Banks are supposed to be highly disciplined and controlled companies, regardless of external regulation. Danielle DiMartino, one of the…
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