Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science

 General  No Responses »
Feb 282008
 

First of all, a little apology … I’m no expert Mathematician, was pretty dire at Physics, and I’m no great name in Computer Science. In fact the “physics” here could be any science that makes use of mathematics as a tool. Now for the really scary part … I’m going to be talking about equations.

At least some of the unpopularity of Physics has something to do with the equations that can be found in it. There is no getting around it, Physics and other sciences cannot be really called “science” without equations. But I do believe that physicists do make their equations a little too mysterious :-

e = m c ^ 2

(apologies for not using real symbols there)

Now that is one of the better known equations from physics, but were it one that was less well-known the general reaction would be “eh?”. Does the obscurity of the variables here help ?

When I was learning to write programs, I quickly came to the realisation that using descriptive variables was the start of writing understandable code and went some way to documenting what was going on. It is all very well writing a piece of code with less expressive variables but it makes understanding what you wrote some weeks (or months) ago much harder.

The use of obscure variables come from Maths where you start with equations like :-

x ^ 2 = 9

Now Maths (as I understand it) is basically a set of puzzles that have to be solved using the techniques of Maths; those techniques and the puzzles are divorced from any real problems. The use of deliberately inscrutable variables is by design.

Which way should sciences that use equations go ? The way that Maths goes with inscrutable variable names, or the way of software engineering with descriptive variables ? Historically sciences have gone down the route in common with Maths; understandably enough, but why not try descriptive names. Isn’t an equation like :-

Energy = Mass * Speed of Light ^ 2

… far more understandable, and possibly just a little bit less scary to those put off by equations ? If changing to descriptive variables brings a few more young people into the study of science, is that a good reason for using them. I think so.

Glasses Wearers Can Do Things

 General  No Responses »
Oct 102007
 

I recently saw a TV ad for laser eye correction surgery which used clips of people doing all sorts of exciting things … riding bikes on rough terrain, paragliding, swimming, etc. The whole implication was that as soon as one gets the surgery, one can suddenly take part in all sorts of exciting activities that were not possible before.

Eye surgery is not something I want to condemn … undoubtedly it can correct eyes to the point where glasses are unnecessary. Personally I am too squeamish to go for it, but I can see the attraction. But I do object to the idea that people who wear glasses are somehow excluded from exciting and active activities because of their glasses. Glasses do not somehow make an active life impossible or even difficult.

Admittedly ball games can be a little tricky without a bit of preparation (such as plastic lenses), but taking off the glasses does not suddenly empower anyone.

It may be that some wearers of glasses do not agree with this, but perhaps most of those are people who have had glasses inflicted on them half-way through their lives; those who have worn glasses all our lives do not think this way.

Alcohol Fueled Violence

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Oct 062007
 

There is no such thing as alcohol-fueled violence; there is only idiot-fueled violence. Claims about how alcohol fuels violence are regularly heard on TV and radio, and in one small sense they are right. Violence can be found in areas where a large amount of alcohol is consumed. But take a closer look …

It is not everyone who goes out drinking on a Saturday night who ends up involved in violence, or even everyone who drinks far more too much who ends up in violence. If that were the case, the level of violence in certain streets would be probably two orders of magnitude worse than it is (i.e. 2 fights would be 200 fights; 10 fights would be 1000 fights). It is only a tiny minority of idiots who cause problems with violence.

These idiots may blame the alcohol, or they may even only become idiots when they have consumed large quantities of alcohol. Either way, the alcohol is not the problem, it is the idiots themselves.

Most of those who complain about the violence want to fight it by doing something about alcohol sales … make it more expensive, stop selling to people who’ve had a few, etc. But why should the majority who drink be punished because of the idiots ? That is not to say that the violence should not be tackled in some way … and the majority of drinkers would be happy to see something done about it. After all we have more interest in seeing something done than those who prefer to stay at home.

One simple idea is to ‘tag’ those who get involved in violence (both sides … one person may be obviously to blame but I’ve seen myself people who go around trying to provoke a violent response) with an electronic tag, and give them on the first occasion a month’s ban from all drinking centres. For a second offense, it becomes two months, then four, and so on, doubling each time. This would be in addition to any other punishment the law may enforce … a prosecution is (and should be) difficult to get a result from, but a simple curfew could be given without so much evidence.

To enforce the curfew, give each doorman a tag detector so they can easily scan people going into a pub or bar, and prevent them.

Don’t punish the drinkers; punish the idiots.

I’m A Rascist

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Sep 122007
 

I’m part of the human race and I’m mostly happy about that. We have a bewildering variety of members … tall ones, short ones, fat ones, thin ones, bright ones, dim ones; we even have two different sexes (which makes things even more interesting). We also have a wide variety of different shades of skin colour, and for some totally incomprehensible reason some people seem to get excited about this. The overly excitable people seem to want to divide us up into different “races” based seemingly on what colour our skin is, and use this arbitrary division to make assumptions about the person wearing the skin. As if the colour of the dead matter that keeps the squishy bits in, and the Sun (and rain) out is particularly important. Of course it is not just skin colour that matters to these people …

Apparently I’m white (although it being at the end of the summer, I’m not really sure I’m white enough to qualify). Which makes me a member of a certain “race”. I’m also English which makes me a member of a smaller “race”, and could mean I’m also Anglo-Saxon (another “race”). I live in a land called “Britain” which gives me a good chance of being a member of the “Brythonic” “race” as well. I live in the south of England so I’m also a “southerner”, and I live in Portsmouth so I’m obviously better than someone from Southampton. In addition I live on the south side of a certain road which makes me far better than those who live on the north side.

Well that’s obviously rubbish! And for the record, historically that last division (north and south of a certain road in Portsmouth) was viewed in that sort of way. If you look closely, what I’m demonstrating is that if we get hung up on differences then we can make smaller and smaller sub-divisions where the group we belong to is “better” and those outside are “worse”. And the factors that determine what sub-division we belong to (skin colour, ancestry, etc.) are the worst possible factors in determining someone’s value.

Apparently being determined not to recognise any sub-division of the human race as being valid makes me some kind of liberal wuss, which bothers me not at all … and those who criticise and call me a wuss for holding this position should sit back and think for a bit. It’s not liberal wusses that cause so much grief with their artificial sub-divisions of the human race.

I’m a rascist and fully prejudiced in favour of the human race … every single last one of them.

History Teaching

 General, History, Media  No Responses »
Jul 222007
 

One thing on the news recently that caught my eye was a complaint about how modern history at school concentrates in detail on a few periods in history but presents no grand overview of events throughout history. Well assuming this is true (the media does not always get things right) then it’s a shame there is no ‘grand overview’. However the pundits commenting on this and suggesting that a grand overview should be part of the course did immediately jump on the old rote memorisation of dates bandwagon.

There’s a large number of people who seem to think you don’t know history if you cannot reel off a huge list of dates of significant events. Mistaking a list of dates for ‘history’ is one of the dumbest mistakes anyone can make … to everyone other than the dedicated rote learner, a history lesson of long lists of dates is excruciatingly boring, doesn’t teach you anything interesting, and has very little to do with history. Those who campaign for children to spend hours memorising dates are doing nothing more than trying to re-introduce a style of teaching that gave a big advantage to those with good memories (and I happen to be one) and a huge disadvantage to those whose memory was less capable but perhaps could understand history more.

There is very little need for people to memorise lists of dates when there are so many reference works available. Does someone who thinks the battle of Hastings was in 1066 have a greater understanding of history than someone who thinks the battle of Hastings happened sometime in the 11th century but also knows it occurred just after the battle of Stamford Bridge ?

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