The terror of mathematics...

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
13,081

jpanhalt

Joined Jan 18, 2008
11,087
I read that article, and my first impression was that the lady who reported him had capital stupidity.

She apparently was simply allowed to re-book another flight without any penalty whatsoever. At a minimum, she should have been charged a re-booking fee.

John
 

tcmtech

Joined Nov 4, 2013
2,867
Well, my life long observation has been that by and large mathematicians in the professional sense tend to have about as strong of grasp of reality and those who work in terrorist cults.

I had one college math professor that I thought was seriously unhinged. Most people said he was fine and it was just me. Then a year later his mathematician brother killed a college student (stabbed him to death if I am recalling it right) and upon that incident he got put through a psych eval and failed it as miserably as his murdering screwball brother.

So the moral of that story, If you ever meet a mathematician who claims to have found a repeating pattern in Pi using a large base numerical system don't argue with them. Just back away or you may get stabbed to death if you give reason to suspect that they may be wrong in their gobbledygook calculations. :oops:
 

Thread Starter

cmartinez

Joined Jan 17, 2007
8,220
Don't worry. There's plenty to go around.:D
https://reason.com/blog/2016/05/04/little-girl-detained-by-police-after-try

I have been saving a $2 bill for decades because its serial number contains the following sequence: 12345067
I guess I will have to expect to be arrested if I ever try to sell it.:(
You know... In his novel "3001: The Final Odyssey" Arthur C Clarke wrote that the 20th century will be remembered as "the century of torture" ... I think that this age in which we're living will be remembered as "the death of common sense"
 

Lestraveled

Joined May 19, 2014
1,946
We are torturing ourselves. Far too often, fear and ignorance have replaced common sense and strength of character. This ignorant fearful woman verses a math teacher is an example of how listening to the fear mongers (national news) works against us.

The center must hold.
 

Thread Starter

cmartinez

Joined Jan 17, 2007
8,220
I've just learned that the professor in question is specialized in economics.

How hard would the equation he was working on be? I mean, economics usually involves linear or quadratic equations... tops, and perhaps first-order derivatives ... or do things get more complicated than that?

I'd like to hear what @WBahn has to say about this.
 

MrChips

Joined Oct 2, 2009
30,711
There is an indeterminant degree of uncertainty that the woman on the hyper-plane was evidently a member of a significant percentile of the general population intersected by an imaginary complex of an obtuse common denominator that cannot differentiate between rational and irrational behavior infinitesimally tangential to the identity of polymaths and therefore periodically tend to hyper-inflate such benign random real perturbations into absolute chaos.
 

Thread Starter

cmartinez

Joined Jan 17, 2007
8,220
There is an indeterminant degree of uncertainty that the woman on the hyper-plane was evidently a member of a significant percentile of the general population intersected by an imaginary complex of an obtuse common denominator that cannot differentiate between rational and irrational behavior infinitesimally tangential to the identity of polymaths and therefore periodically tend to hyper-inflate such benign random real perturbations into absolute chaos.
Now you've gone hyperbole on us :rolleyes:
 

wayneh

Joined Sep 9, 2010
17,496
I've just learned that the professor in question is specialized in economics.

How hard would the equation he was working on be? I mean, economics usually involves linear or quadratic equations... tops, and perhaps first-order derivatives ... or do things get more complicated than that?

I'd like to hear what @WBahn has to say about this.
Things can get very complicated if you start looking at statistics, population dynamics, epidemic models and on and on. It's as complex as any other science because it's all about predicting human behavior. It's harder than you might think. That's why they're usually wrong.
 

Thread Starter

cmartinez

Joined Jan 17, 2007
8,220
It's harder than you might think. That's why they're usually wrong.
I agree... It must be harder than I think... otherwise it wouldn't be a standard 4-year university course. But those guys also focus on psychology and social sciences, and it's not as mathematics-inclined (including algebra, arithmetic, geometry and calculus) as engineering usually is...
 

Lestraveled

Joined May 19, 2014
1,946
The giants, whose shoulders we stand on, wrestled the world from the grip of monsters and tyrants. It is our responsibility to wrestle the world from the grip of fools.
 
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