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Split Thread Conspiracy theories about unconventional usage of notation

The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Reopened Part V

Vixen said:
I have no intention of 'dumbing down' as it were, even if it doesn't conform with the US ways of doing things… (actually making things more complicated than necessary IMV).
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No, this isn’t a U.S. problem. We use the international standard for specifying durations of time. I work all the time with scientists and engineers from the U.K. and Europe. None of them uses primes for temporal minutes and seconds. We all use SI units.

Now if you want to argue that primes are still common in lay usage, or older, traditional usage, you can. But that’s not a difference in standards or education. That’s you being a lay person instead of a scientist if any kind — and even then you can’t get the values or units right. This is a “Vixen is wrong” problem, not a “The world is varied” problem.
 
JayUtah said:
No, this isn’t a U.S. problem. We use the international standard for specifying durations of time. I work all the time with scientists and engineers from the U.K. and Europe. None of them uses primes for temporal minutes and seconds. We all use SI units.

Now if you want to argue that primes are still common in lay usage, or older, traditional usage, you can. But that’s not a difference in standards or education. That’s you being a lay person instead of a scientist if any kind — and even then you can’t get the values or units right. This is a “Vixen is wrong” problem, not a “The world is varied” problem.
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Exactly. I'm British. I had a science-skewed secondary education in a very good school, followed by a first degree and then a masters in electronic/comms engineering from a very good university. And I've worked in finance related to the telecoms/internet industry pretty much all my working life. And I have NEVER, EVER, IN MY ENTIRE HISTORY OF EDUCATION AND WORK, encountered anyone using prime notation for units of time.

What's more, my education and experience has given me sufficient grounding in the scientific method to enable me to assimilate and assess most scientific evidence and carry out a decent level of scientific analysis. Further, I know what I don't know, and happily defer to those who have expertise/experience/knowledge that's over & above my own. In fact, I relish learning from such people. Oh, and I am also entirely ready to hold my hand up and apologise if I ever turn out to be wrong in any given piece of analysis/opinion. I find that these qualities are not only desirable in the quest for well-reasoned scientific debate - they're actually essential.

And that's why I can be extremely highly confident that the Estonia sank because its poorly-designed, poorly-constructed and (very) poorly-maintained bow visor detached under heavy load in high seas in the midst of a storm, causing a huge influx of seawater into the open vehicle deck (with the bow taking in enormous "gulps" of water every time it dug into an oncoming wave) which in turn caused the ship to become terminally unstable and capsize in very short time. After that, the sinking was inevitable. No sabotage. No attempts to push vehicles over the side into the raging seas. No submarines. No torpedoes.
 
LondonJohn said:
. And I have NEVER, EVER, IN MY ENTIRE HISTORY OF EDUCATION AND WORK, encountered anyone using prime notation for units of time.
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Then you've had a pretty sheltered life. The notation is used (see my earlier reference to John Cage) by many. The salient point is that most people who do use it are actually familiar enough with it to get it right, and honest enough to admit when they get it wrong.
 
zooterkin said:
Then you've had a pretty sheltered life. The notation is used (see my earlier reference to John Cage) by many. The salient point is that most people who do use it are actually familiar enough with it to get it right, and honest enough to admit when they get it wrong.
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I said that in my entire history of education and work, I've never seen it used. And that is true. Of course I know of occasions when it has been used, but it's not used - to my knowledge and extensive experience - in anything related to science and engineering (including any analysis and debate which is founded on scientific principles).

Your last sentence remains entirely salient, of course.
 
By the way, has anyone ever seen, written in any publication, a sentence such as "The train was running 20' late"?

Thought not.
 
Vixen said:
I read that as twenty hours late.


If you mean twenty minutes, I would put 20".
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Then you'd be wrong. Some other wrong person might choose to put 20'''' to represent 20 minutes. They'd be wrong too. 20'' has never, in the history of time notation, been used to represent 20 minutes.
 
zooterkin said:
You’d be wrong again,then.
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Why base 60? The Babylonians divided the day into 24 hours, each hour into 60 minutes, each minute into 60 seconds. This has survived for 4000 years! – Notations for sexagesimal numbers, e.g., 5 hours, 25 minutes, 30 seconds include 5h 25' 30" the ‘sexagesimal fraction’ 5 25 / 60 30 / 3600 5; 25, 30. – the number 5; 25, 30 - in sexagesimal form - can be expressed as a base 10 fraction: 5 4 / 10 2 / 100 5 / 1000 – i.e. 5.425 in decimal notation.
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https://slideplayer.com/slide/7348086/

ETA: Obviously, the sexagesimal system can be used for anything with a base-60, so not just an hour (= 60 minutes) but also a minute (= 60 seconds).
 
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LondonJohn said:
Then you'd be wrong. Some other wrong person might choose to put 20'''' to represent 20 minutes. They'd be wrong too. 20'' has never, in the history of time notation, been used to represent 20 minutes.
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From wiki:

Modern uses for the sexagesimal system include measuring angles, geographic coordinates, electronic navigation, and time.
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By the 17th century it became common to denote the integer part of sexagesimal numbers by a superscripted zero, and the various fractional parts by one or more accent marks.
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Here we are on this thread like tangent/mistake by Vixen number .38e(carrot)' 48"to the 87nth degree. What that number is in base 10? I dunno somewhere between a whole frickin lot and infinity.
 
And none of this has anything to do with the MS Estonia, a ship never designed for open ocean transit, sailing into a storm at flank speed resulting in large waves knocking the bow visor loose, and then off. This resulted in the ship flooding, capsizing, and sinking.

That's what happened. That is what the evidence then and now shows happened.
 
JayUtah said:
No, two primes is 20 seconds. You’re really bad at this.
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It can be 20 seconds. Think of it this way (hopefully, we'll get there in the end!)

Feet = '

Inches= "

Minutes = '

Seconds = "

OR, alternatively:

Hours = '

Minutes = "

As long as the context is clear I don't see the problem. We know M/S Estonia sank within 35". Hard to see how that can be seen as depth of water or seconds.

Happy Christmas, All. Keep smiling!
 
Vixen said:
It can be 20 seconds. Think of it this way (hopefully, we'll get there in the end!)

Feet = '

Inches= "

Minutes = '

Seconds = "

OR, alternatively:

Hours = '

Minutes = "

As long as the context is clear I don't see the problem. We know M/S Estonia sank within 35". Hard to see how that can be seen as depth of water or seconds.
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It's hard to see how it can be minutes, given that 35 minutes is expressed as 35', not 35".

Have you ever asked anyone to make a model of Sonehenge?
 
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