Tag: Real world math
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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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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…
Polistra's Mill 