Minstrel’s Log

You’d think it would be simple. Of course, at first, it is.

a = b

The same thing as saying b = a, it means (in simplified terms) that a and b are interchangeable, any place you could use one, you can use the other and get exactly the same result.

Okay, fine. but what happens when you get:

a=(sqrt(17)-2)/3

see, that’s nice and accurate, but just glancing at it, you don’t know about where it would come on the number line. So, of course, you write another line saying that it’s approximately equal to 0.707. Great, but how do you write that?

a ∼ 0.707
a ≈ 0.707
a ≅ 0.707

Well, the first one, ∼, according to the HTML specification means that it varies with, or is similar to. The Unicode standard just calls it the “tilde” operator. According to the Wikipedia article on Asymptotic Analysis (which refers to a couple of text books) it means that the functions are asymptotically equivalent - essentially that as they approach infinity, they scale in relatively the same manner. Of course, this would make no sense when declaring the numerical value of a variable.

Okay, the second one, ≈, is referred to by the HTML spec as meaning almost equal to, or asymptotic to. Somewhere on wikipedia it’s said to mean approximately equal to, and the Unicode standard says “almost equal to”.

The third one, ≅, has the HTML spec AND the Unicode standard call it “approximately equal to”, but wikipedia swears it’s “congruent to”.

That’s not even counting a couple of other Unicode symbols - including one that Unicode says is “asymptotically equal to”.

So which one do I use? I don’t want to end up saying that a is “congruent” to 0.707, but I’m not able to find a clear, established usage guide for them.

Grr.

Yes, it’s amazing! I’ve figured out a formula for subtraction!

Okay, well, actually, there are two of them, and they’re more like procedures, but the great thing is that they work!

Before I get into them, the question must be asked, Why? Why would one need a formula, or even any sort of strange procedure, just to subtract numbers? We learn that in Grade 1.

Sure we do, but then, after that, we learn about negative numbers, and everything become nasty.

It all has to do with the interaction of signs.

Addition, the first thing we do, is fairly simple - it’s just two numbers that you stick together, if they have the same sign, they keep their sign, if they have different signs, the result has the sign of the larger.

Multiplication and Division have no connection at all between magnitudes and signs, the signs interact on their own - if the signs are the same, the result is positive, if the signs are different, the result is negative.

In all three of these cases, the only signs you need to know about are the signs of the numbers themselves - its nice and simple.

Subtraction, however, is another story.

In its simplest form, when both numbers are positive, then if the second number is larger than the first, the answer is negative, otherwise the answer is positive.

However, if the first number is negative, and the second is positive, then the result will always be negative.

On the other hand, if the first number is positive, and the second is negative, then the result will always be positive.

Yet finally, if both numbers are negative, then if the first number is larger than the second, the result will be negative, and otherwise the answer will be positive.

It’s a dyslexic’s nightmare. Even if you get the sign correct, you have to make sure you didn’t subtract that negative number instead of adding it.

Which brings us back to the point - how do you subtract numbers without getting into the morass of if-or-else?

Simple:

If the signs are different, add the magnitudes* together, and take the sign of the first number.

Ex:

3-(-5) (signs are different)

3+5=8 (magnitudes)

answer: 8 (the first number is positive, therefore, the result is positive.)

If the signs are the same, find the difference of the magnitudes, and if the second number is larger, the sign is different than the two, otherwise it is the same.

Ex:

(-3)-(-5) (signs are the same)

5-3=2 (note that 3-5=-2, you can do it either way, we don’t care what sign we get - we figure out which sign we need in the next step)

answer: 2 (5, the second number, is larger than 3, the first, so our answer has a different sign than the two inputs - they were negative, so our answer is positive.)

Yarr!

* The magnitude is simply how far away it is from 0 - in either direction. Both 5 and -5 have the same magnitude: 5

I came across an interesting “Brain Speed” test:

PositScience

It’s an auditory test that measures your “listening speed”. I got 33ms the first time, and 28ms the second time (I’ve only taken it twice so far).

That supposedly means that I’m able to understand someone talking quickly in a noisy environment.

In reality, the system is meant to sell you a program that is claimed to keep the mind sharp as you get older - on the site where you take the test, you have to choose your age category: Under 40, Over 90, or the 10-year span within those that you fall under.

It’s an interesting thing though, and I’m curious to see what sorts of scores other people get - especially considering that I have long claimed that I’m not an auditory thinker.

In an interesting side note, I found I did better deciding what I was hearing as I listened, rather than listening and deciding after - the reverse of how I would have expected to do.

Quite a while since I last posted, actually.

Still, less than a year though, so I can declare this blog to actually *not* be defunct.

Brilliant, eh?

I came across an interesting site the other day. Not something I expected to come across, but…

fishbase.org

It’s a database of fish. 29,400 Species, 222,400 Common names, 43,000 Pictures… there’s a fascinating link on the main page to Fish Identification that leads you through identifying any fish you may happen to come across.

A great site to explore.

I was chatting with someone the other day, and they mentioned that they weren’t that interested in having a cell phone and a pda combined.

So I was thinking it over, and they’re right - it doesn’t make much sense to have a cell phone and a pda together. A PDA runs specialized apps - things that keep track of data for you in certain ways. You can write notes in it, you can use it to make lists of things you need to buy, etc. A cell phone is used for communication.

However: it does make sense for a cell phone to be combined with a phone/address book. PDAs can make excellent phone/address books.

In my last blog entry!  Me! A Phrasology Coinifier! Sweet!

I even googled it, and it was not found

Here it is, in all its glory:

“If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing now.” — Rhett Lunn

So I realized today that I’m not good at doing things later. I’m wonderfully great at doing things now, but I am less than mediocre at doing things later.

Which explains (/summarizes) a lot. back in HS, I would gladly work on the homework in class, but doing it at home (or even after school)? Ugh. Not happening. [lol, that was like, so teen of me, like, wow lmao].

Some people, however, are suprised that when they ask me to do something I get working on it right away - dropping whatever I was doing before. I think it worries them that I’m either (1) following their every command (which they didn’t ask for), or (2) mocking/angry at them. What it really is, of course is a combination of (1) I agree with their request, and figure that if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing now, and (2) If I don’t do it now, I won’t do it later.

(PS: I like the above quote that I just made up.)

And I picked up a bottle of “Corn Syrup” as it is known in northern North America. Anyways, I, for some strange reason, had expected it to contain some amount of corn… I know, silly me…

So the (translated) ingredients?

Sugar, sugar, sugar, water, sugar, sugar, salt.

Yep.

Okay, the following is unlikely to make sense to anyone (possibly unless one is an xNTP), so just consider yourself warned.

I’m sure we’ve all heard the quote: “Kill or be killed, eat or be
eaten.” It sounds very simple, clear, and logical. If a lion doesn’t
run out and kill a wildebeest, it will become weak, and a band of
hyenas will kill it. Likewise, if it does not eat, it will weaken, and
become food for some other animal.

We could even extend these laws (as any “good” law can serve as the foundation of a whole line of quality thought and insight).

How about “Hit or be hit.” Or perhaps the oft-quoted (and some would say more realistic) adaption of the ‘golden rule’: “Do unto others as they would do unto you — but do it first!”

The thing is, there’s a problem.

Newton’s Third Law is a fun thing. It talks about forces: interactions between objects. Specifically: “To every action, there is an equal but opposite reaction.” More accurately: “To every force applied to one object, there is a force of equal magnitude, but opposite direction applied to another object.”

This means that, for example, while I’m sitting on a chair, I am exerting a force downward on the chair, and the chair is exerting a just as powerful force upwards on me. It also means that, for example, if I hit another car with my car, the other car will hit back at my car with the same amount of force.

But wait a second. A few paragraphs back we saw that the rule was “Hit or be hit.” But Newton’s Third says “Hit and be hit; Kill and be killed.”

It’s an interesting thing to consider.