That makes sense - plus I should probably take a course or something. I've tried to learn on my own, but maybe that's a mistake.

Top 10 mathematical innovations

1. Arabic numerals
2. Calculus (Isaac Newton, Gottfried Leibniz)
3. Negative numbers (Brahmagupta)
4. Zero (Brahmagupta)
5. Decimal fractions (Simon Stevin, Abu’l Hasan Al-Uqlidisi)
6. Binary logic (George Boole)
7. Non-Euclidean geometry (Carl Gauss, Nikolai Lobachevsky, János Bolyai, Bernhard Riemann)
8. Complex numbers (Girolamo Cardano, Rafael Bombelli)
9. Matrix algebra (Arthur Cayley)
10. Logarithms (John Napier, Joost Bürgi, Henry Briggs)

What do you think?

#11. Fingers and toes

One of the local papers had the headline:

POLICE SHOOT MAN WITH A KNIFE

How do you load one?


Several years ago, there was a story about a man who was at home and another man entered, pointing an automatic pistol. The assailant pulled the trigger but the gun didn't fire. The shooter looked at the gun and realized the magazine had fallen out. End of story, right?
No, the man told his intended victim to wait while he went back to his car for the bullets, and left. The victim scooted, too.

So funny! So, did he wait?

I loved this article (though not word related) about the observations of German children who have been living in Chicago. I don't know if you can access it, so if not here's a quote from it:

quote:

Want more Chicago-is-bigger-and-better through the eyes of European children? "American policemen ride on beautiful horses like knights," my kids tell me. They are mesmerized by police officers on horseback in Lincoln Park. Berlin stopped using mounted police years ago because the horses were too expensive to maintain. I like it best when my kids challenge the prejudices of their parents. "Why are the power lines in the air?" ask my kids. Our European explanation is: The U.S. doesn't care enough about its infrastructure and therefore didn't bury all power lines below ground. "You have been wrong," said my kids days later: "The power lines in the air have a purpose. The beautiful squirrels use them as bridges over the roads to avoid being run over by a car."

From the on-line Muncie Star Press: Delta High School was without partial power this morning, causing the high school to dismiss at 10 a.m.

I would think they'd be happy to not have partial power, but maybe that's just moi.

quote:

I would think they'd be happy to not have partial power

Well I expect the kids were happy enough to get off school for a day.

quote:

would think they'd be happy to not have partial power, but maybe that's just moi.

No, they want total control.

I wonder what "partial power" is. Power in just part of the building? Or not quite enough power so that the lights are dim (I have seen that)?

Evidence-based medicine actually isn’t

Evidence based medicine: a movement in crisis?

by Trisha Greenhalgh, Professor of Primary Health Care and Dean for Research Impact, Centre for Primary Care and Public Health.

quote:

Crisis in evidence based medicine?

• The evidence based “quality mark” has been misappropriated by vested interests
  
• The volume of evidence, especially clinical guidelines, has become unmanageable
  
• Statistically significant benefits may be marginal in clinical practice
  
• Inflexible rules and technology driven prompts may produce care that is management driven rather than patient centred
  
• Evidence based guidelines often map poorly to complex multimorbidity

Real evidence based medicine:

• Makes the ethical care of the patient its top priority
  
• Demands individualised evidence in a format that clinicians and patients can understand
  
• Is characterised by expert judgment rather than mechanical rule following
  
• Shares decisions with patients through meaningful conversations
  
• Builds on a strong clinician-patient relationship and the human aspects of care
  
• Applies these principles at community level for evidence based public health

Actions to deliver real evidence based medicine

• Patients must demand better evidence, better presented, better explained, and applied in a more personalised way
  
  
• Clinical training must go beyond searching and critical appraisal to hone expert judgment and shared decision making skills
  
  
• Producers of evidence summaries, clinical guidelines, and decision support tools must take account of who will use them, for what purposes, and under what constraints
  
  
• Publishers must demand that studies meet usability standards as well as methodological ones
  
  
• Policy makers must resist the instrumental generation and use of “evidence” by vested interests
  
  
• Independent funders must increasingly shape the production, synthesis, and dissemination of high quality clinical and public health evidence
  
  
• The research agenda must become broader and more interdisciplinary, embracing the experience of illness, the psychology of evidence interpretation, the negotiation and sharing of evidence by clinicians and patients, and how to prevent harm from overdiagnosis

On my way to work on Sundays I listen to this: http://soundmedicine.org/ Today there was a discussion very much like what you posted, Tinman. It seems that Consumer Reports Magazine and a group of health professionals are establishing similar guidelines to what you posted.

This must have been discussed awhile back? Anyway, Tinman, these principles look quite accurate. The think about a lot of statistically significant results in medicine is just what Tinman posted about crises in medicine - too often millions are spent on studies that show "significant differences" and yet they are really only marginally helpful, if that, in actual practice.

I enjoyed this article , which is tangentially related to words/language. It's supposedly about the language of horses, though it really only touches upon that. Her use of words, though, is what interested me. And I learned a new word, sprezzatura, meaning "an easy nonchalance that conceals effort." I suppose ballet dancers have (?) sprezzatura.

Geoff read this article and found this:

quote:

His neck curves away before me, as arched as a chess knight’s, and at the end, those two eloquent white ears. Like radar dishes they swivel to...

He asked, and I wonder too - "eloquent ears??"

Actually, the position and movement of a horse's ears day give a good indication of its state of mind.

Hmmm, you have a point. I think of "eloquent" as meaning "articulate." However, one of the definitions in an online dictionary is, "movingly expressive," which I really like.

Interesting article about overdiagnosis.

Even when correct, diagnoses can harm kids

quote:

Diagnosis or Overdiagnosis?

Some medical diagnoses may be correct but lead to unnecessary or even harmful treatments, researchers say in a recent Pediatrics paper. Here are seven of 15 diagnoses the researchers cite as possible examples of overdiagnosis in children:

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder
Food allergy
Gastroesophageal reflux
High bilirubin levels/jaundice
High cholesterol
Skull fracture
Urinary tract infection

Source: E.R. Coon et al/Pediatrics 2014

Totally agree. It happens all the time with adults, too. However, here is another side of the story.

With pediatrics it reminds me of Munchausen Syndrome, where the mother (usually, though it could be the primary caretaker) makes up, exaggerates or even causes symptoms in their kids.

Hi Tinman; Away back in August you posted a link that celebrated the top 10 mathematical innovations, and you asked:

quote:

What do you think?

... You got no further suggestions in answer to your question (beyond Proofreader's jocose offering!), but IMHO there are two other recent significant mathematical innovations - to wit, Chaos theory, and Catastrophe theory - where the former is surely big enough to belong in the top 10 (replacing either "zero" or "logarithms"). Fractals, arising out of Chaos theory is the missing link in being able to apply mathematical modeling to a vast range of physical "irregular things" that previously defied such modeling (mountains, waves, forests, flowers, trees, etc....).

The invention of "zero" I have always felt to be over-rated - necessary, to be sure, but inevitable, and therefore not worthy to be called a Top-10 "innovation" (the mathematical equivalent of calling the wheel an innovation).

quote:

IMHO there are two other recent significant mathematical innovations

Whereabouts in the top ten list would you place them? Or would you prefer to expand the list to a top 12?

quote:

necessary, to be sure, but inevitable, and therefore not worthy to be called a Top-10 "innovation"

I differ from you on that. In fact, I'd drop calculus down to fifth and move zero up to second, above negative numbers; the concept of zero is really necessary before negative numbers can be grasped fully.

This is a rather sad commentary in the NYTs newspaper about what has happened to college professors in the last 30 years or so.

It's interesting that, as so often, there's a difference in US-UK usage of 'professor'. In the UK a professor is a senior academic, usually the head of a department. I understand that pretty well every tenured faculty member involved in teaching is styled 'professor' in the USA. Over here the more junior teaching staff are called 'lecturer' or 'senior lecturer'. There is, therefore, only a handful of professors at each university.

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
This is a rather sad commentary in the NYTs newspaper about what has happened to college professors in the last 30 years or so.

Thanks, Kalleh, I would have missed the article. Did you check out the comment thread as well? The first bunch of "NYT Picks" offer detail on what has changed.

I did not read the comment thread. Thanks for alerting me!

Arnie, a professor here is often considered the senior academic, too, because in the academic hierarchy they are the "full professors." The lower professors are the assistants and the associates. We have lecturers as well, though not senior lecturers. The lecturers aren't on a tenure track, however, though the fulls, associates and assistants are. I am sure that's all as clear as mud!

This article talks about the importance of interpreters during war and how one man decided to help them to come to America.

I particularly liked this comment, having visited Scotland recently: "Meanwhile, over in America, Mr. Zeller was putting his Scottish orneriness to good effect, enlisting members of Congress, prodding the bureaucracy and in general refusing to take no for an answer."

Language heard, but never spoken, by young babies bestows a hidden benefit

quote:

Dutch-speaking adults who were adopted from South Korea as preverbal babies held on to latent Korean language skills, researchers report online January 18 in Royal Society Open Science.

quote:

It’s possible that some of these language skills were acquired during pregnancy, as other studies have hinted.

Fascinating article, Tinman.

Thanks. I am passing this on to several relatives that have babies.

An article from the "Big Think" site featuring the ideas of my father's old buddy, Garret Harden: http://bigthink.com/errors-we-...-of-the-commons-myth
See Harden's book, Promethian Ethics and his treatise, "The Tragedy of The Commons."
T.Rump and Clinton's Wall Street cronies should take note.

Sadly, T. Rump (as you call him; I either call him "president" or Donald) will never take note of anything.

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
Sadly, T. Rump (as you call him; I either call him "president" or Donald) will never take note of anything.

Instead of Donald Duck (I mean Trump), we should call him daffy duck. If he didn't hold such a position of power, he would be laughable.

Oh, I do like that.

Of all my years of living here in the U.S., I never would have thought I'd feel this way about our "president."

I think we should use "president" Trump when referring to him.

It was so good to hear about today's elections.

A transgender candidate beats a self-proclaimed homophobe.

A woman only standing in response to a misogynist meme posted by her opponent beats him.

A Liberian refugee beats a Mayor who didn't want refugees in his city.


Damn, the late-night comedy shows write themselves.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BobHale,

Now you know what we're dealing with, Bob.

Made all the more pithy when one considers who founded Liberia, and why. Also ironic since Liberia seems to be a failed state.

Here is a story that may put a crimp in your activities.

And it's even a word post - never heard of the word "fapstronauts" before, have you?