Conversions are, relatively speaking, rare and unimportant. Just choose the right unit scaled to the task at hand. For example, D&D encumbrance is much easier when measured in stone (rather than tenths-of-a-pound, for example).
Great comment. Born in the U.S. and I have no problem using metric stuff at any time, but I do prefer imperial measurements for exactly these reasons. I feel that while metric makes calculations and conversions easier, imperial makes the initial measurement itself easier (especially when estimating or without a calibrated measuring device). Part of the "imperial is stupid" debate comes from over-emphasizing exact calculations and degeneration of the ability to do estimations.
I'll minimally disagree and say that calculations today are much easier than they were in the past (due to electronic calculators). Let's say you eliminated all calculators from Earth and asked a bunch of random people to divide 5 by 8 (or equivalently, divide a sheet into 5 parts of 8). Trivial with fractions, but most people (albeit not Slashdotters) would struggle with decimals.
Fractions are a technology for making divisions easier, that became obsolete on a daily practical basis when digital calculators became available.
The yin-yang of fractions and decimals is something like this: - Fractions allow ratios (divisions) to be presented exactly, whereas decimals requiring rounding to get to a convenient-to-read-and-write presentation. (What's the rule for that? How many significant digits? How much error and when will it make a practical difference after many operations? See: Numerical Analysis.) * - While decimals (with rounding error after divisions) are often good enough for daily practical calculations, when doing precise mathematics, or presenting relationships in a formula, you almost certainly prefer to have a fraction showing the relationship in its most exact form. - Fractions make multiplying/dividing easy, but adding/subtracting relatively hard. Conversely, decimals make adding/subtracting easy and multiplying/dividing relatively hard. Depending on which operation you do more, one or the other will be advantageous. All things considered, most formulaic relationships depend on multiplying more often than adding -- hence the convention that leaving out an operation between variables is taken by default to indicate multiplication. (Which in turn would argue for fractions being more useful more of the time.)
You can repeat this whole thought-process for the next step up the order of operations, i.e., maybe complain about the radical symbol as "dumb" because it frustrates you, but your options for the diagonal of a unit square are to either write (a) sqrt(2) and be exactly correct, or (b) 1.414 and be sort-of-wrong but maybe-close-enough-for-today's-personal-task. The inverse operations (subtraction, division, roots) will always have some prickly complications to deal with, and it's necessarily a matter of balancing precision-versus-need-for-new-notation (negatives, fractions, radicals).
* Some of my college stats students struggle with rounding correctly for at least a whole semester, bleeding points all the way on exams. While they start out delighted to be using a calculator and no fractions, they then find that there's a whole separate frustrating set of replacement details that's costing them points every other week. What one giveth, the other taketh away.
I disagree with, like, all of this. (a) Algebra at least teaches the notation/language of math (variables, operators, order of operations, etc.) such that someone can read and use formulas that are part of almost any discipline. (b) Confidential grade results are distinct from telling students what their class standing is -- you can do both, in each case, confidentially (as required by law), so that others don't use that information against them. (c) Acting like Gym is the "subject our kids focus on" is ludicrous granted the obesity and lack of exercise among our population nowadays. A smaller proportion of outliers hoping to be athletes are neither representative, nor caused by Gym class in school.
If there's any game I would want required for students it would be: Poker. (I say this, having been weaned on chess as a kid, and having won a competition in high school.) The problem with chess is at least twofold, in that it has both (a) full information, and (b) no randomness, a bad model for real-world applications, which will not present themselves that way. I'd rather have people playing poker and dealing with (a) probability, (b) partial information, (c) logic and deduction, (d) psychology and reading people, (e) betting and expected values, etc.
The last test I gave in a community college stats class had this question: "True or false: If I roll a fair die 36 times, a one will come up 6 times." Almost everyone in the class said "true". Afterward, I had one of my better students remark with surprise, "So it's not certain?" I'd love to not have to introduce the very idea of probability to students for the first time when they're sophomores in college.
Well, market forces and moral obligations are not the same thing, eh? I do hope this is a case where the market forces surrounding a great variety of very different screens benefit the sight impaired along with the rest of us. Whether it does or not, kudos for your company.
"A current example would be why is there a picture of a floppy disk to save data? Would any 8th grader know what a floppy disk is? If not, how does that icon make any sense at all?"
I feel like the rise of mobile devices acts as an insurgency on this very issue. To the extent that someone laid out a web page as "a matrix of GIF files", then it won't work on a small mobile device screen. If you commit to providing tailor-made graphic designs for every device, hopefully you'll fall behind shops that properly abstract the layout. It's good to have radically different displays widespread in the world, as it forces designers to deal with this very principle.
How dare you assert that any of our resources be directed by the government into research and development for the greater good of the nation? When CEO's could instead have the total freedom to take the money and run? As Reagan's assistant secretary for productivity & technology said in 1984, outlining a plan to restructure all of higher education, "Accountability and expertise must come from the private sector where the user needs are best identified. This is our intent." Thank god that has been so successful!
Basically self-promotion by a huckster. And poorly written. Stuff like (FTA):
"Rutkowski runs the Founder Institute in Los Angeles which launches about 1000 companies year and prides himself as being the fist person to coin the term 'Web 3.0' during a press conference with Google CEO Eric Schmidt."
There are lots of personal values that people hold aside from "get[ting] a few bucks". If you've never done it, it might be good to read a basic philosophy book or something.
In response to the several comments re: "it's all in good fun, just a joke, not trying to catch pirates" -- note that what's happening is tricking people with a fake error message that includes their Steam ID, so when they report it can get their account banned.
FTA: "Not long after posting the request, the user found themselves permabanned from the forums for using pirated software."
Slashdot Mirror
Conversions are, relatively speaking, rare and unimportant. Just choose the right unit scaled to the task at hand. For example, D&D encumbrance is much easier when measured in stone (rather than tenths-of-a-pound, for example).
Great comment. Born in the U.S. and I have no problem using metric stuff at any time, but I do prefer imperial measurements for exactly these reasons. I feel that while metric makes calculations and conversions easier, imperial makes the initial measurement itself easier (especially when estimating or without a calibrated measuring device). Part of the "imperial is stupid" debate comes from over-emphasizing exact calculations and degeneration of the ability to do estimations.
I'll minimally disagree and say that calculations today are much easier than they were in the past (due to electronic calculators). Let's say you eliminated all calculators from Earth and asked a bunch of random people to divide 5 by 8 (or equivalently, divide a sheet into 5 parts of 8). Trivial with fractions, but most people (albeit not Slashdotters) would struggle with decimals.
Fractions are a technology for making divisions easier, that became obsolete on a daily practical basis when digital calculators became available.
The yin-yang of fractions and decimals is something like this:
- Fractions allow ratios (divisions) to be presented exactly, whereas decimals requiring rounding to get to a convenient-to-read-and-write presentation. (What's the rule for that? How many significant digits? How much error and when will it make a practical difference after many operations? See: Numerical Analysis.) *
- While decimals (with rounding error after divisions) are often good enough for daily practical calculations, when doing precise mathematics, or presenting relationships in a formula, you almost certainly prefer to have a fraction showing the relationship in its most exact form.
- Fractions make multiplying/dividing easy, but adding/subtracting relatively hard. Conversely, decimals make adding/subtracting easy and multiplying/dividing relatively hard. Depending on which operation you do more, one or the other will be advantageous. All things considered, most formulaic relationships depend on multiplying more often than adding -- hence the convention that leaving out an operation between variables is taken by default to indicate multiplication. (Which in turn would argue for fractions being more useful more of the time.)
You can repeat this whole thought-process for the next step up the order of operations, i.e., maybe complain about the radical symbol as "dumb" because it frustrates you, but your options for the diagonal of a unit square are to either write (a) sqrt(2) and be exactly correct, or (b) 1.414 and be sort-of-wrong but maybe-close-enough-for-today's-personal-task. The inverse operations (subtraction, division, roots) will always have some prickly complications to deal with, and it's necessarily a matter of balancing precision-versus-need-for-new-notation (negatives, fractions, radicals).
* Some of my college stats students struggle with rounding correctly for at least a whole semester, bleeding points all the way on exams. While they start out delighted to be using a calculator and no fractions, they then find that there's a whole separate frustrating set of replacement details that's costing them points every other week. What one giveth, the other taketh away.
I disagree with, like, all of this. (a) Algebra at least teaches the notation/language of math (variables, operators, order of operations, etc.) such that someone can read and use formulas that are part of almost any discipline. (b) Confidential grade results are distinct from telling students what their class standing is -- you can do both, in each case, confidentially (as required by law), so that others don't use that information against them. (c) Acting like Gym is the "subject our kids focus on" is ludicrous granted the obesity and lack of exercise among our population nowadays. A smaller proportion of outliers hoping to be athletes are neither representative, nor caused by Gym class in school.
If there's any game I would want required for students it would be: Poker. (I say this, having been weaned on chess as a kid, and having won a competition in high school.) The problem with chess is at least twofold, in that it has both (a) full information, and (b) no randomness, a bad model for real-world applications, which will not present themselves that way. I'd rather have people playing poker and dealing with (a) probability, (b) partial information, (c) logic and deduction, (d) psychology and reading people, (e) betting and expected values, etc.
The last test I gave in a community college stats class had this question: "True or false: If I roll a fair die 36 times, a one will come up 6 times." Almost everyone in the class said "true". Afterward, I had one of my better students remark with surprise, "So it's not certain?" I'd love to not have to introduce the very idea of probability to students for the first time when they're sophomores in college.
Well, market forces and moral obligations are not the same thing, eh? I do hope this is a case where the market forces surrounding a great variety of very different screens benefit the sight impaired along with the rest of us. Whether it does or not, kudos for your company.
FTA: "None of the participants could figured out what Ubuntu One."
Indeed.
"By definition, government produces exactly nothing."
Well, that's total and complete bullshit. My guess is that you know the definition of neither "government" nor "definition".
Mod this up!
Also, all you Amish farmers can STFU about barn-raising until I see Amos over there hoist one up by himself.
I agree with your diagnosis, but sight-impaired screen readers are a market small enough to be ignored. Mobile devices aren't.
You say that as though people were rational actors.
Yeah, it feels like a clingy, manipulative ex-husband. "This time I'll change", etc., etc.
"A current example would be why is there a picture of a floppy disk to save data? Would any 8th grader know what a floppy disk is? If not, how does that icon make any sense at all?"
No. I've found that even for current college students, that icon has no meaning.
Great comment! (No mod points right now.)
You win the "concise and correct" award of the day!
I feel like the rise of mobile devices acts as an insurgency on this very issue. To the extent that someone laid out a web page as "a matrix of GIF files", then it won't work on a small mobile device screen. If you commit to providing tailor-made graphic designs for every device, hopefully you'll fall behind shops that properly abstract the layout. It's good to have radically different displays widespread in the world, as it forces designers to deal with this very principle.
How dare you assert that any of our resources be directed by the government into research and development for the greater good of the nation? When CEO's could instead have the total freedom to take the money and run? As Reagan's assistant secretary for productivity & technology said in 1984, outlining a plan to restructure all of higher education, "Accountability and expertise must come from the private sector where the user needs are best identified. This is our intent." Thank god that has been so successful!
When your thoughts travel at the speed of light around the world, who needs Mach I (or whatever) airplanes?
And: so much more reasonable to explore space with robots. Enough with the human romanticism; it's killing our actual space research.
Precisely.
Absolutely, that's exactly what I thought.
Basically self-promotion by a huckster. And poorly written. Stuff like (FTA):
"Rutkowski runs the Founder Institute in Los Angeles which launches about 1000 companies year and prides himself as being the fist person to coin the term 'Web 3.0' during a press conference with Google CEO Eric Schmidt."
Etc., etc.
There are lots of personal values that people hold aside from "get[ting] a few bucks". If you've never done it, it might be good to read a basic philosophy book or something.
In response to the several comments re: "it's all in good fun, just a joke, not trying to catch pirates" -- note that what's happening is tricking people with a fake error message that includes their Steam ID, so when they report it can get their account banned.
FTA: "Not long after posting the request, the user found themselves permabanned from the forums for using pirated software."