(no subject)

[theweaselking]

Quoth silmaril:

Arrrrrgh. Aaaargh. Argh.

(They. Even. Linked. The. Concept. To. Temperatures. And. Still. "I'm not having it." ARRRRGH!!!)

Comments

[lurkerwithout.livejournal.com]

More evidence to point to when The Great Cleansing begins...

[elffin.livejournal.com]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH

[post-ecdysis.livejournal.com]

My brain didn't a splode until the spokesman for the Association of Teachers of Mathematics referred to them as "minus numbers".

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

I suspect that's a regional-terminology thing, actually.

[post-ecdysis.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my first thought was that it was a British-ism, but the journalist correctly calls them "negative numbers". A quick check of Wiki and Google Fight (http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=negative+numbers&word2=minus+numbers) convinces me that it is a global barbarism.

(Alas, yes, Mirriam-Webster's Tenth does have an entry for "minus" as an adjective as well as a preposition, and not just in the acceptable phrase "B-minus". The fact that someone got it wrong in 1800 does not make it correct or even acceptable in modern language, and this point should be understood by a fellow mathematician better than anyone.)

The vorkers kontrol the means ov produktion

[frith]

Just to be facetious, isn't English, from the very get go, a barbaric language, left to it's devices while the British élite conversed in Latin and French? Sure, dictionaries and grammar rules have been trying desperatly to gentrify the beast for centuries, painting the whore in Latin spellings and pseudo-Latin pronounciation, but, I mean really -- sewer water is still sewer water even if you send it once or twice through an autoclave. So, what I mean to say, if the vox populi wish to basterdize a term here and there in what is already a living illegitimate language, who are we to stifle it?

Re: The vorkers kontrol the means ov produktion

[post-ecdysis.livejournal.com]

To answer facetiously, we are mathematicians. Mathematical language (http://thinkexist.com/quotation/mathematicians_are_like_frenchmen-whatever_you/179777.html) works hard for a more precise language so that we may more effectively communicate fundamental truths. It is the same in all technical fields: to you and me, "disease", "disorder", and "syndrome" all mean the same thing, but they would not be synonymous in the context of a medical journal. A properly trained mathematician is the same, except unable to turn it of at the end of the day.

To blow the point out of proportion, teachers with the freedom to assert that "minus" is an adjective will train students who will feel free to assert that the real numbers are ordered by magnitude.

The point is taken, the beast is molting, the fluff gets up your nose

[frith]

I grant you the technicality, if only because I sympathize with your examples. *g* At work, I wonder how many synapses I fried, how many neurons I eviscerated as I wrapped their heads around the concept that precision is independent of accuracy, and thus some of our precious thermometers might be completely unreliable despite their high precision.

[tezoar.livejournal.com]

or it could be how you'd explain it to those eleven-year-olds at the end of a long day...

[chizzer.livejournal.com]

..................

[nadriel.livejournal.com]

O_o

[kalieris.livejournal.com]

*weeps*

[publius1.livejournal.com]

...

[reyl.livejournal.com]

Congratulations, you have won a free FAIL. Do not pass GO. Please go directly back to primary school.

[jerril]

The big freeking hint should be that the entire card is talking about being cold, and themed with ice cubes, and icicles, and penguins, and whatnot.

That said, I've seen similar confusion before in people talking about air conditioners. People argue about whether turning the A/C "up" means setting it colder or warmer...

It's also amazing how confused people get when you tell them to round a negative number "down". It seems to be a 50/50 split between people who read that as "round toward zero" and people who read that as "round 'in the negative direction'".

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

"round down" means "round to the next-lower number".

And yes, this can result in increasing the magnitude of your number by rounding it down. That's okay.

[cacahuate.livejournal.com]

Aaaaauuuuuugh.

[frith]

You think that's bad, at work so few of my co-workers are able to set up _analog_ timers that either I go around fixing their mistakes or I just install all the timers myself. In the last two mistakes I had to fix, one had both pin on the dial facing inwards (thus the timer never turned the light off) and in another the timer was installed on an extension cord already controlled by an analog timer (so the light only turned on every 2nd day). X-D

[tyoko.livejournal.com]

I think that woman knows perfectly well she made a mistake. By saying "I'm not having it" she isn't trying to redefine mathematics, but is trying to claim the moral highground against all the people she thinks are laughing at her.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

"On second thought, let's not go there. It's a very silly place."

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

[nicholaw.livejournal.com]

Innumeracy in those playing scratchcards? I'm shocked.

[dscotton.livejournal.com]

How depressing.