Posted on 06/11/2013 8:08:40 PM PDT by smoothsailing
June 11, 2013
America dodged a bullet last year by rejecting the dark occult powers of “math witch” Paul Ryan in favor of rocket scientist and shotgun aficionado Joe “Three Letter Word” Biden. Voters in Massachusetts are facing a similar dilemma this year, as Democratic Rep. Ed Markey, fending off a challenge by Republican Gabriel Gomez, wowed the audience at tonight’s debate but showing off his own math skills.
(Excerpt) Read more at twitchy.com ...
Government budgeting?
Hahahahahaha!
It’s neither math NOR arithmetic; it’s horse sh*t.
"Mathematics is the abstract study of quantity, structure, space, change, and many other topics."
So it's math, but it's just not complicated enough to be " math".
Linguistically, arithmetic is a part of mathematics .
Most of the populace is ignorant too.
Saw the clip. The man has a point, or may have - I don’t know what point he actually is discussing without more context.But, speaking as a retired engineer, one of my pet peeves is the fact that grammar school teachers, and high school teachers other than math teachers, typically don’t know any math other than arithmetic. If that describes you, fine - but understand that that ignorance is only ignorance, not wisdom.
You can be quick and accurate at addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division - and even at taking square roots - without knowing the first thing about algebra or geometry, say nothing of calculus or vectors or matrices. The point is that, “word problems” aside, arithmetic is merely procedure to be learned by rote. Given that Roman Numerals are terribly awkward for arithmetic, for all their sophistication they didn’t do a lot of arithmetic, and if you could do long division you would undoubtedly be qualified to be a very valuable slave in Rome.
The clue in grammar school that I would be good at higher forms of math later on was that even though I disliked the rote addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division practice like everyone else, I enjoyed the word problems which most or all of my classmates despised worse than the number crunching practice. But of course the number crunching practice predominated in homework assignments, so mostly I just disliked Arithmetic and didn’t consider myself good at it. And the teachers didn’t pick up on it either, because they thought math was number crunching and nothing else. I remember Plane Geometry, in tenth grade, as the first class in which I showed up well in math.
So this is just Know-Nothingism.
Exactly....
He will cruise to easy victory, following in Fauxcahontas’ foot steps....
Hasn’t been a moronic politician the taxachussetts voters haven’t liked.
You speak a language, you speak English. Which is a more accurate description of what you need to know to communicate on this forum?
Howie Carr knows that Markey drove the Mister Softee truck in Malden because I told it to Dennis and Callahan three years ago. I live around the corner from Markey’s Townsend Street house. The best Ed Markey story though is when he had former Red Sox outfielder Dwight Evans sign a baseball at a Wake in Malden that I was at.
If true, that is without doubt a rare event in the life of Ed Markey.
Half the populace is below average intelligence.
That sure helps explain the existence of elected Democrats.
If true, that is without doubt a rare event in the life of Ed Markey.Saw the clip. The man has a point...
Well, I did qualify that by noting that I couldn’t tell from that short clip what point he was actually trying to make - only that arithmetic is, contrary to the reactions I was seeing here (your #10 not least), very far from being the entirety of mathematics.A friend of mine once e-mailed me to say that he was teaching computer use, and wanted help with nomenclature. He understood what analog-to-digital conversion was - but he was unable to research why it was called “analog” anything. And that set me to thinking about the difference between quantity and number. Number is a name for a quantity.You could have two glasses with some water in each, for example. If I asked you to add the quantities of water, you could use a measuring cup and say, “One of the glasses has 5 ounces of water and the other has 6 ounces of water; the result of that addition is 11 ounces of water.” That would be performing conversions to digital numbers, followed by arithmetic addition. But there is another approach, which a preschool child might do - and which would be equally, or even more, valid. He might simply pour the water from each glass into a pan. That is the requested quantity. “Eleven ounces” is merely a more or less inaccurate name for that quantity.
Which makes the point that the procedure which you were taught in grade school is indeed “addition,” but addition is not defined by that procedure. That procedure is merely a way to determine the name for the sum of two quantities from the names for those two quantities (the generic term “analog” in the term “analog to digital” derives from the “analog computer” - which synthesizes voltages which are analogous to physical quantities which would be expected to occur in a system under interesting conditions).
That facepalm describes my reaction when I realized how I had blundered in an Analog Computation lab class in college - when I realized that I had completely missed the point of analog “computation." That first lab demonstrated analog addition, and it was clear to me that it worked. But (I wondered half a century ago), “What is the point of taking the trouble of setting one dial to the value representing one number, setting another dial to the value representing the second number, and then reading a DC voltmeter to obtain your sum? It seemed to make no sense - it would be tedious to make the settings accurately and to read that voltmeter accurately - and the accuracy you could obtain was limited, whereas the good old fashioned method I learned in grade school could be done to any necessary precision, and could be done just as easily.What I hadn’t taken into account was the fact that the analog computer wasn’t intended merely to produce a digital sum of two digital numbers, but to create voltages which varied continuously. Thus, the addition which occurred in the circuit happened continuously with varying inputs and a correspondingly varying output. Analog “computation” thus is fundamentally suitable for cases where you can use the “just put the water from both glasses in the same container” form of addition.
And if that seems like another face palm moment to you, now you know why you didn’t study engineering! And why an engineer might laugh at the story of the three jocks who were commiserating with each other after having flunked out of college. The first jock says, “I was getting by until I had to study Calculus, and then I was completely snowed.” The second jock says, “Algebra” completely baffled me, and I had to drop out.” The third jock says, “Any of you guys ever heard of ‘long division?’"
What a jackass
>> What a jackass
A property of being a Democrat.
Real Engineers consider themselves well dressed if their socks match.
Real Engineers buy their spouses a set of matched screwdrivers for their birthday.
Real engineers have a non-technical vocabulary of 800 words.
Real Engineers repair their own cameras, telephones, televisions, watches, and automatic transmissions.
Real Engineers say “It’s 70 degrees Fahrenheit, 25 degrees Celsius, and 298 Kelvin” and all you say is “Isn’t it a nice day?”
Real Engineers wear badges so they don’t forget who they are. Sometimes a note is attached saying “Don’t offer me a ride today. I drove my own car”.
Real Engineers’ politics run towards acquiring a parking space with their name on it and an office with a window.
Real Engineers know the “ABC’s of Infrared” from A to B.
Real Engineers know how to take the cover off of their computer, and are not afraid to do it.
Real Engineers’ briefcases contain a Phillips screwdriver, a copy of “Quantum Physics”, and a half of a peanut butter sandwich.
Real Engineers don’t find the above at all funny.
http://www.workjoke.com/engineers-jokes.html
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