communication. community. cognition.
Posts tagged Math
Score a Zero
Apr 25th
Yes, I did – because apparently someone in India did first.
Let me explain.
In a previous post, I gave credit for “nothing” to the wrong culture:
“It is the spatial equivalent of the Arabs inventing the Zero.”
Well, as Occam’s RazR reader Atanu Dey points out ever so elequently:
“The first indubitable appearance of a symbol for zero appears in 876 in India on a stone tablet in Gwalior. Documents on copper plates, with the same small o in them, dated back as far as the sixth century AD, abound.”
So, it is the Arabs who borrowed “nothing” from the Indians, and took “nothing” to the West. I “scored zero” for my historical knowledge, while it was an Indian who first “scored a zero” on a copper plate.
I stand proudly corrected. And visit Atanu – he’s a very bright guy.
[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, India, mathematics, Atanu Dey[/tags]
Truth in Advertising
Apr 19th
Sometimes, the words we choose communicate things we didn’t mean – and sometimes they end up being more honest than we wished.
Here’s an example, from Clearspring, which develops products for developers who develop widgets:
We are building services to make cross-platform widget development, distribution, and tracking as easy as ‘pi.’
Now I love a good pun as much as anyone else. In fact, I cracked the following joke on a hapless telemarketer: More >
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Multiplication Subtraction Division
Apr 9th
Saw this on a commercial recently (and it’s here on the web), and it made me wonder:
“one study found that up to 70% of people who had genital herpes got it from their partner when their partner had no signs or symptoms of an outbreak.”
Now, call me crazy here – but if I read that correctly, we can properly re-interpret that result thusly:
“one study found that more than 30% of people who had genital herpes got it from their partner when there were in fact (insert your own medical description here).”
Yes, 3 out of 10 people who have herpes either were not paying attention to where they put their genitals (which is bad,) or were paying attention and did not care (worse.) I don’t buy the “they didn’t know any better” argument. I don’t know of a single sex-ed argument or curriculum that includes a “red light/green light” slide show.
I’m not sure what else to say. That’s just a fascinating statistic, and one that is cleverly buried in the verbage.
[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, valtrex, herpes, statistics, advertising[/tags]
Million Dollar Language
Mar 16th
“Why use a 50-cent word when a 5-cent word will do?” That advice needs to be adjusted for inflation, because we live in the age of Million Dollar Language.
I saw a billboard on the way in to work, highlighting a contest being run by a local bank. Being the stickler for language that I am, something caught in my frontal lobe and wouldn’t rattle out:
“Someone could win one million dollars.”
The contest is called the “Make Life Interesting Sweepstakes,” by AmSouth/Regions (the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of bank mergers; two great banks that couldn’t bear the thought of being someone else’s minor appendage, so they joined forces like the last two good looking people from the shipwreck.)
The M in GMA
Feb 22nd
…does not stand for “mathematics.”
I was watching “Good Morning America” this morning, and heard two different math-related gaffes that made me scowl. Sadly, our habits as passive listeners mean that a great number of other mistakes might be sliding under our collective radar.
The first was a simple mis-reporting of a statistic. Chris Cuomo (designated newsreader) was reading an item about illegal immigration. Apparently, the latest statistics from the Border Patrol indicated that fewer people were crossing illegally into the United States. The proof, as read by Cuomo, was a stat indicating that the number of illegal immigrants caught was down 27-percent from last year. Pardon me for being a stick in the mud, but couldn’t that also be an indication of other things?
- Migrants are picking less-monitored locations?
- Border Patrol agents are lazier?
Just off the top of my head. There might be others.
The second math error involved probabilities… More >
Bending the Truth
Jan 28th
That phrase, “bending the truth,” seems to carry quite a negative connotation. In the modern era of spin sensitivity and greater awareness of persuasion in action, one who “bends the truth” is often considered guilty of some transgression. Usually it involves some type of manipulation of language, taking words at their absolute face value and ignoring the common meaning. Like the teenager who confidently and truthfully tells his parents “I was home before midnight!”, because technically speaking, 12:15 a.m. is a full twenty-three hours and forty-five minutes before midnight.
But what would happen if we could take a different appreciation for “bending?” Let’s stop for just a moment to appreciate all of those philosophers and thinkers whose “bending” of known truths exposed an even greater underlying truth. (And maybe underlying carries the wrong sort of connotation as well…)
Rocket Feathers
Jan 17th
You can spend ages describing curves, lines, arcs, dips, depressions, and textures with mathematical precision…
…or you can just call something a statue.
One of the greatest gifts a communicator can wield when given an inscrutable scenario to explain is the proper analogy. If a picture is a thousand words, and analogy can be a thousand pictures.
I was in search of just such an analogy, to explain a phenomenon that too often gets over-simplified to a point of rage and envy: the disparity between the rapid acceleration of gas price increases, and the slow leisure of their descent. More >
