Split Thread Conspiracy theories about unconventional usage of notation

[whoanellie]

Who?

Brilliant

 

[JesseCuster]

Further, even very knowledgeable people make silly, inattentive mistakes. They are corrected, and they accept it graciously, and their credibility hardly suffers.

Not only does their credibility not suffer, it improves. A willingness to admit error is a sign of intellectual honesty and critical thinking.

 

[Vixen]

Here's the relevant paragraph from the post to which you refer, which clearly states that I do not claim the canonical base unit must be specified in order to establish what extent is being measured.

​

And let's revisit the gaffe that has amused so many.


But let's restore the full context. You wrote

​

Your objection is not that 6 ft 2′ ⅛″ is nonsensical--which it is--but that it's over-specified (yet apparently otherwise acceptable). And that opinion is driven by the apparent belief that you can willy-nilly restate the canonical base units for some extent and thereby change what the first and subsequent cuts mean.

You emphatically cannot.

Your ongoing duplicity on this point is illustrated by statements such as the following.



Establishing that "the first is in yards" is unnecessary. The base unit for length is yards--never anything else. Hence ′ is always feet, the first cut; ″ is always inches, the second cut. Yes, we habitually keep such measurements unnormalized, and therefore habitually omit naming yards as the nominal unit. But the immutability of the yard as the canonical base unit of length is the authority by which ′ and ″ keep their immutable meanings as feet and inches. We seem to properly agree on this point.

Hours, minutes, and seconds work the same way, despite your self-serving equivocation.

It's unclear whether you consider 6 ft 2′ ⅛″ to be improper because it nominates a different base unit or because it employs redundant indicators: both names and primes for feet. Both are mistakes, but unraveling your gyrations proves difficult. If you say 6 ft, you're not using primes notation for length. Why? Because it's using nominal abbreviations for what, in primes notation, would only properly be identified by a prime. Neither 6 ft 2′ nor 6 ft 2″ is meaningful because the named unit is not the right one.

If you're using primes notation and if you include a nominal unit, then the named unit must be the canonical base unit. Otherwise the notation is inconsistent and therefore incorrect. That is not a requirement to use a nominal/canonical base unit in all cases.

As we've belabored, nothing illustrates this better than the preference of feet to yards. The meanings of the primes don't change, even though we omit the nominal units and denormalize the quantity of feet.

But then you say

​

You cannot do this. You can no more renominate the canonical base unit for time (hours) any more than you can renominate the base unit for length (yards) or angles (degrees). ′ is an unambiguous measurement of length because it's always the first cut of the canonical base unit, even when the base unit is omitted. ′ is an unambiguous measurement of an angle because the canonical base unit never changes, and therefore the meaning of its first cut never changes. ′ is an unambiguous measurement of time because its canonical base unit (hours) never changes.

Even still you can't get the terminology right. There is a "base unit" and there is a "first cut." There is no such thing as a "first base," except in American baseball and canoodling. The base unit of time is the hour, abbreviated nominally as h. This never changes. The first cut of time is the minute, defined as 1/60 of an hour and noted immutably in primes notation by a single prime ′. This, too, does not change. The second cut of a hour is seconds of time. That's literally why it's called "seconds."

By the same logic that lets us omit yards and write feet and inches solely with primes, we can omit hours and write minutes and seconds unambiguously using primes.

In an attempt to justify your original error, you insinuate that we can simply renominate days as the base unit for time. You suggest that doing this redefines the first cut to be hours and the second cut, notated ″, to be minutes. Therefore your usage 35″ should have been properly understood as "thirty-five minutes."

No. You cannot do this.

Not only did you give no indication whatsoever that you wanted a recontextualization to make days to be the new base unit of time, your own explanation of feet and inches belies that you know you cannot renominate a base unit without introducing the very ambiguity that the primes notation was invented to avoid. You concede that feet and inches are immutably and unambiguously identified using ′ and ″, and you even give the correct reason why. But then you abandon the whole system and claim that none of those rules should be in force while you tacitly and arbitrarily redefine what the symbols mean when measuring time instead of distance or angles.

Why? The reason is obvious. You wrote 35″ when you meant "thirty-five minutes," and refuse to concede that you didn't know that was the wrong notation.

Your first ruse was to insist that this is a perfectly ordinary convention--a bluff. Then when you compounded your error by writing 0.35″, at first you didn't even see the problem. Then when it was spelled out to you in excruciating detail, you deployed the second nonsensical explanation: that the 0. portion was somehow a cobbled-up way to express hours, and therefore to disambiguate the primes. When that fell flat you said


That's a backhanded concession. We went from an alternative convention to simply "something [you] have always done," irrespective of what others might have done. You insinuate that different education produces different convention that explains your usage, but your fellow Britons have contradicted you. You even insinuate that it's our fault we've never heard of this singular, confusing exception to the rules of a system that was in widespread usage for hundreds of years.

Here's how we know this is bollocks.

Do you remember your idiom of the FX prefix? Remember how you claimed it was common notation in screenplays? It isn't. After pages and pages of refutation, you finally fell back to the notion that FX was just something you personally used among your girlfriends. And here we are again. After first claiming your usage was proper according to standard or convention, you've fallen back to the irrefutable, "Well, it's just what I use." Your first inclination whenever any error is pointed out to you is to double- or triple-down and insist that you are still right even when the evidence of your error is plain. Your first inclination is to lie. Only much later, if ever, do you come clean and contradict your first lies by admitting that your usage is just your personal habit. I suppose in your mind that equates to something like, "I can't be wrong if it's something I've always done and was never contradicted."

I assure you a Vixen-only "convention" can most certainly be an error. And it very much is in this case. What you propose to do is contradicted by the standard you say you are conforming to. You are simply wrong, full stop.

Why are we so focused on what are, by any metric, insignificant errors? Precisely because they are insignificant. You lose little if any face to say, "Oh, I just thought that's what FX meant," or "Oops, I wrote ″ when I meant ′," or, "I misspoke when I said 'perpendicular." People will see that you're amenable to contrary facts, and that you will adjust your beliefs accordingly. Further, even very knowledgeable people make silly, inattentive mistakes. They are corrected, and they accept it graciously, and their credibility hardly suffers. Your insufferable insistence on a mantle of infallibility is pathological.

What we learn about you in this thread is that under no circumstances will you retract a statement that is shown to be wrong. Instead, you will go to extreme lengths and tell all kinds of lies in order to maintain the illusion that you are still somehow right. And yes, we can tell that you do this. If you are legitimately believing your lies, then you have serious issues we can't address in this forum. Whatever that posture, it is clear to all of us that maintaining the illusion that you're infallible is more important to you than actually having the correct facts and arriving at well-reasoned conclusions.

This means you're neither technically nor morally qualified to question other people's expert work. You cannot be trusted to respect facts, or the people who know them better than you do. Hence until you can show some semblance of intellectual honesty, you're more likely to be mocked at this forum than debated.

I am flattered you believe I invented a system that mirrors the Ancient Babylonians and that I also made up 'FX'. However, I am not going to lie and take credit for something I followed as mere convention. The former (using " for minutes of time duration) was conventional for me. I have no recollection of having been 'taught' it but we all did it. As for the fx business, this is common internet abbreviation that came into being around about the same time as 'rofl' and the side smile : ) [I had to leave a space as the software keeps converting it into a smiley emoji], predating emojis as we know them to day.

I have found a random message in my email archives from such a discussion forum (in those early days you had to set up something like LISTSERV if you wanted a forum discussion group). The following one of many comes from year 2004 and not written by myself:

> Jan asks:
> >Anyone know how much you can give away and still
> die soon after?
>
> I think it's a thousand pounds to each child (that's
> me and my
> brother) <FX: whisper> that's why he gives me cash.

So no, I can't be bullied into 'admitting' I 'made it all up' nor is it anything to do with 'saving face.' When I said it was conventional, I was being factual.

And BTW the Ancient Babylonians never had a zero in their counting systems so the addition of stuff like 'hr' is a modernism. Obviously, publishing houses have styles which change over time. However, that doesn't stop people from using informal shorthand.

I wonder whether anybody else ever used the following shorthand:

1. ∴

1. ∎
2. - " -

 

[Mojo]

I wonder whether anybody else ever used the following shorthand:

1. ∴

1. ∎
2. - " -

The top one is "therefore", and the bottom one is a slightly old-fashioned way of writing "ditto".

I don't recall seeing the middle one. Is it "Adolph Hitler"?

 

[zooterkin]

I wonder whether anybody else ever used the following shorthand:

1. ∴

1. ∎
2. - " -

Is '1, 1, 2' a counting sequence that is merely conventional?

 

[Vixen]

Is '1, 1, 2' a counting sequence that is merely conventional?

Typo. I had to start a new list, didn't spot the duplication.

 

[Vixen]

And yet, that's exactly what you did say.



If port is at 45° and starboard at 135°, they are at 90° to each other which is, as you have already conceded, perpendicular.

What happens when you take the imaginary figure and rotate it 45°?

 

[zooterkin]

And yet, that's exactly what you did say.



If port is at 45° and starboard at 135°, they are at 90° to each other which is, as you have already conceded, perpendicular.

What happens when you take the imaginary figure and rotate it 45°?

It doesn't change the fact that 135 - 45 is 90. Have another go.

 

[JayUtah]

I am flattered you believe I invented a system that mirrors the Ancient Babylonians...

Straw man. I don't claim you invented the system. I claim you're misusing a well-known system out of ignorance and inventing stories of its rules, usage, and origin in order to cover up your error. I have provided the evidence for my claim, which you do not address.

...and that I also made up 'FX'.

Straw man. I don't claim you invented the shorthand FX. I claim you erred in describing how it did originate, and stuck to that story long after evidence was shown of your error. The true origin of the shorthand is well known. You are not on the hook to explain why you stuck with your made-up origin story for so long. We know why. I refer to it merely as an additional example of what you're trying to do now. It establishes a pattern of behavior in which you stick stubbornly to your original claims rather than admit error and incorporate new information.

The former (using " for minutes of time duration) was conventional for me. I have no recollection of having been 'taught' it but we all did it.

Who are "we all?" You have been challenged to produce evidence that anyone besides yourself has ever used ″ to indicate minutes of time. Produce the evidence or withdraw the claim.

So no, I can't be bullied into 'admitting' I 'made it all up' nor is it anything to do with 'saving face.' When I said it was conventional, I was being factual.

You've provided no evidence of these alleged facts. Your allegations of fact are contradicted by evidence that you have not addressed.

And BTW...

Irrelevant deflection.

I wonder whether...

Irrelevant deflection.

Please address the evidence provided.

You have claimed the use of ″ to indicate minutes of time is a convention used by others besides you. Please show where anyone else has used it.

You have suggested that in the case of time, the canonical base unit in primes notation can be renominated as days to make your notation valid. Please reconcile how you think this can be done within the rules you yourself agreed made the system work.

 

[LondonJohn]

Who are "we all?" You have been challenged to produce evidence that anyone besides yourself has ever used ″ to indicate minutes of time. Produce the evidence or withdraw the claim.

Using &t$ for minutes of time duration was conventional for me. I have no recollection of having been 'taught' it but we all did it.

 

[Vixen]

We don't teach high-schoolers (roughly equivalent to U.K. O-levels) the primes notation for time. But I (and probably others) learned it independently then, in my case because I saw historical reports of athletic events that gave times in that notation. I inferred the meanings properly because primes for angular subdivisions are taught in American high schools.

The first section of the FE exam--the first of two licensing exams for engineers--is all about measurement systems. The preparatory materials for that exam delve deeply and broadly into the history and method of measurement, including primes. Primes for time is mentioned as an historical usage, no longer much used and no part of any modern engineering or scientific standard for time. But because primes notation for other extents is part of a number of modern standards, the theory behind the system is part of the education. American engineers have to know more than just how it works; they have to know why it works. Why it works is that the primes never change meaning.



Our silent musical piece is a salient example, but it was named back in the 1950s, roughly coincident with the date of the materials I first saw using it. So we have sort of two questions. The first is whether primes notation is or was ever used to reckon time. It was, and there was a standard. Not so much anymore. The second is whether Vixen's use of primes notation for time is correct. It is not.



Agreed. That's pure invention on Vixen's part, apparently to concoct a story for why her various misuses and errors should not be considered evidence of her ineptitude.



I prefer to follow parsimony: she's making stuff up in order to appear more competent than she is, and making up more stuff to cover the mistakes in the stuff she made up previously. This has been her pattern.

I have to thank you at least for confirming that that method was used for durations of time, despite dozens of posters claiming they have never come across it in all their days.

As for the 1950's my school was quite 'traditional' (although I wasn't there in the 1950's!). The masters and mistresses wore black gowns and the more pretentious prouder ones their mortarboards and Oxbridge colours. The school motto was based on cricket. There was a quadrangle, playing fields, tuck shop, netball courts and a belfry. As first formers, we were called 'fags'. The teachers called all pupils by their last name. French (or Latin) and German was learnt by reciting long verb lists and learning them off by heart. I can still vividly remember these today, and also silly French songs about 'my cock <> is dead', etc. This was before the more modern method of 'conversation'. For Music we had to learn all the major composers, name, date of birth, date of death, what they died of, where they were from (tricky question today!) what piece/s they were famous for. As part of the first year exams Mr. Price would play a few notes on the the piano and we were expected to 'name that tune'. We all (naturally) voted 'Conservative' in the school mock elections. All this did change with the school going comprehensive, although it didn't affect my syllabi. The workload was massive and challenging, hours of homework every night, everything in longhand so there were a lot of shorthand abbreviations. It wasn't one teacher, it was a different teacher for different subjects. So not sure where the ' and " came from for hours and minutes, or alternatively minutes and seconds. Both were considered OK. You wouldn't really use this notation in homework or exams but OTOH you wouldn't lose marks if it was clear to the examiner what you meant. When I stated 35" I assumed it was obvious what was meant but clearly not. So to illustrate it to one poster who claimed to be baffled, I inadvertently wrote it as 0.35' (since everyone insisted " would be seconds) when it should have read 0'35" to make the point it was 35 minutes of an hour (because it was less than one hour it didn't need to be mentioned, in the same way you can put 6" for length without having to put 0' for feet if it was less than a foot). Alas, it didn't go down well and caused more confusion and chaos on the level of world war three breaking out! Hopefully, he and others now appreciate that 35" did not refer to depth of water (which would be written 2'11" anyway) but time in minutes duration it took the vessel in question to sink. It would not credibly sink in 35 seconds. Context is all.

 

[Vixen]

It doesn't change the fact that 135 - 45 is 90. Have another go.

Given that the imaginary figure is 90°, what happens when it is rotated 45°?

You may refer to the metacentric diagrams.

 

[LondonJohn]

I have to thank you at least for confirming that that method was used for durations of time, despite dozens of posters claiming they have never come across it in all their days.

Careful with that straw now! Everyone in this thread knows that the prime notation system can be used to represent units of time. But 1) prime notation is effectively never used for time units when it comes to scientific discourse; and 2) when prime notation is used for time, minutes of time are always notated with the single prime (') (with seconds of time being notated with the double prime ('') - the clue is in the name there...).

As for the 1950's my school was quite 'traditional' (although I wasn't there in the 1950's!). The masters and mistresses wore black gowns and the more pretentious prouder ones their mortarboards and Oxbridge colours. The school motto was based on cricket. There was a quadrangle, playing fields, tuck shop, netball courts and a belfry. As first formers, we were called 'fags'. The teachers called all pupils by their last name. French (or Latin) and German was learnt by reciting long verb lists and learning them off by heart. I can still vividly remember these today, and also silly French songs about 'my cock <> is dead', etc. This was before the more modern method of 'conversation'. For Music we had to learn all the major composers, name, date of birth, date of death, what they died of, where they were from (tricky question today!) what piece/s they were famous for. As part of the first year exams Mr. Price would play a few notes on the the piano and we were expected to 'name that tune'. We all (naturally) voted 'Conservative' in the school mock elections. All this did change with the school going comprehensive, although it didn't effect my syllabi. The workload was massive and challenging, hours of homework every night, everything in longhand so there were a lot of shorthand abbreviations. It wasn't one teacher, it was a different teacher for different subjects.

O. M. G.

Was all of the above irrelevant ramble some sort of attempt to impress??

Wow.

So not sure where the ' and " came from for hours and minutes, or alternatively minutes and seconds. Both were considered OK.

If this is true (which it is not), then your school was substandard in its teaching. Because ' has never been used to represent hours, and '' has never been used to represent minutes. Never. Ever.

You wouldn't really use this notation in homework or exams but OTOH you wouldn't lose marks if it was clear to the examiner what you meant.

I guarantee you - just as I can guarantee every non-UK participant in this thread - that you'd lose marks in any exam if you used ' for hours and/or '' for minutes. And once again, this nonsense about "...if it was clear to the examiner what you meant" is a clear giveaway wrt your scientific illiteracy: one cannot just use any notation one likes, just so long as one "makes it clear what you meant". There's correct notation and there's incorrect notation. And - unequivocally and inviolably - using '' for minutes is incorrect notation.

When I stated 35" I assumed it was obvious what was meant but clearly not.

When you wrote 35'', there were only three viable correct interpretations as to "what was meant". Either you meant 35 seconds of time, or 35 seconds of arc, or 35 inches. There are no other possibilities.

But then....

So to illustrate it to one poster who claimed to be baffled, I inadvertently wrote it as 0.35' (since everyone insisted " would be seconds) when it should have read 0'35" to make the point it was 35 minutes of an hour (because it was less than one hour it didn't need to be mentioned, in the same way you can put 6" for length without having to put 0' for feet if it was less than a foot). Alas, it didn't go down well and caused more confusion and chaos on the level of world war three breaking out! Hopefully, he and others now appreciate that 35" did not refer to depth of water (which would be written 2'11" anyway) but time in minutes duration it took the vessel in question to sink. It would not credibly sink in 35 seconds. Context is all.

....you dug yourself in deeper and deeper, as you recount above. You don't know what you're talking about, and every "explanatory" post of yours merely serves to make that clearer and clearer.

 

[LondonJohn]

Given that the imaginary figure is 90°, what happens when it is rotated 45°?

You may refer to the metacentric diagrams.

Oh mannnnnn.

Look, I'll try to make it as simple as possible to understand.

Imagine you are the captain of a ship. You are standing on the bridge, right in the centre of the bridge, looking straight ahead along the centre line of the ship.

OK with the concept so far?

Now, picture an imaginary line which runs from your eyes, through the tip of the bow of your ship, and out towards the horizon.

Still OK?

Anything to the left of that line - even by 1 arcsecond - is port. And anything to the right of that line - even by 1 arcsecond - is starboard.

 

[wollery]

I have to thank you at least for confirming that that method was used for durations of time, despite dozens of posters claiming they have never come across it in all their days.

As for the 1950's my school was quite 'traditional' (although I wasn't there in the 1950's!). The masters and mistresses wore black gowns and the more pretentious prouder ones their mortarboards and Oxbridge colours. The school motto was based on cricket. There was a quadrangle, playing fields, tuck shop, netball courts and a belfry. As first formers, we were called 'fags'. The teachers called all pupils by their last name. French (or Latin) and German was learnt by reciting long verb lists and learning them off by heart. I can still vividly remember these today, and also silly French songs about 'my cock <> is dead', etc. This was before the more modern method of 'conversation'. For Music we had to learn all the major composers, name, date of birth, date of death, what they died of, where they were from (tricky question today!) what piece/s they were famous for. As part of the first year exams Mr. Price would play a few notes on the the piano and we were expected to 'name that tune'. We all (naturally) voted 'Conservative' in the school mock elections. All this did change with the school going comprehensive, although it didn't affect my syllabi. The workload was massive and challenging, hours of homework every night, everything in longhand so there were a lot of shorthand abbreviations. It wasn't one teacher, it was a different teacher for different subjects. So not sure where the ' and " came from for hours and minutes, or alternatively minutes and seconds. Both were considered OK. You wouldn't really use this notation in homework or exams but OTOH you wouldn't lose marks if it was clear to the examiner what you meant. When I stated 35" I assumed it was obvious what was meant but clearly not. So to illustrate it to one poster who claimed to be baffled, I inadvertently wrote it as 0.35' (since everyone insisted " would be seconds) when it should have read 0'35" to make the point it was 35 minutes of an hour (because it was less than one hour it didn't need to be mentioned, in the same way you can put 6" for length without having to put 0' for feet if it was less than a foot). Alas, it didn't go down well and caused more confusion and chaos on the level of world war three breaking out! Hopefully, he and others now appreciate that 35" did not refer to depth of water (which would be written 2'11" anyway) but time in minutes duration it took the vessel in question to sink. It would not credibly sink in 35 seconds. Context is all.

In other words you received a second class education in a snooty atmosphere run by pretentious prats who never pulled you up on your non-standard use of primes.

You could have simply said - "Well, we used it that way at school, and nobody ever told us it was wrong, but if it is then I apologise and will stop using it that way in future seeing as it causes confusion."

 

[W.D.Clinger]

I don't 'admit' I 'made a mistake' because I know I am right.

That is your fundamental mistake. Most of your other mistakes are consequences of that sentence.

 

[JesseCuster]

As for the 1950's my school was quite 'traditional' (although I wasn't there in the 1950's!). The masters and mistresses wore black gowns and the more pretentious prouder ones their mortarboards and Oxbridge colours. The school motto was based on cricket. There was a quadrangle, playing fields, tuck shop, netball courts and a belfry. As first formers, we were called 'fags'. The teachers called all pupils by their last name. French (or Latin) and German was learnt by reciting long verb lists and learning them off by heart. I can still vividly remember these today, and also silly French songs about 'my cock <> is dead', etc. This was before the more modern method of 'conversation'. For Music we had to learn all the major composers, name, date of birth, date of death, what they died of, where they were from (tricky question today!) what piece/s they were famous for. As part of the first year exams Mr. Price would play a few notes on the the piano and we were expected to 'name that tune'. We all (naturally) voted 'Conservative' in the school mock elections. All this did change with the school going comprehensive, although it didn't affect my syllabi. The workload was massive and challenging, hours of homework every night, everything in longhand so there were a lot of shorthand abbreviations. <snip>

Cool story bro.

I've no idea what you learning a bunch of boring details about dead composers has to do with anything on this thread though.

 

[JesseCuster]

Given that the imaginary figure is 90°, what happens when it is rotated 45°?

An angle of 90° remains an angle of 90° no matter what way you rotate it.

 

[JesseCuster]

I have to thank you at least for confirming that that method was used for durations of time, despite dozens of posters claiming they have never come across it in all their days.

But no-one has confirmed that " was used for minutes. That's your real error here, insisting that ' can be a valid way of designating hours and " can be a valid way of designating minutes.

It isn't, and if you were taught that way at school, then you were taught wrong, despite your snooty Oxbridge educated mortarboard and gown wearing teachers.

 

[GlennB]

Cool story bro.

I've no idea what you learning a bunch of boring details about dead composers has to do with anything on this thread though.

It's just a distraction, a smokescreen. Seen it many times in these Estonia discussions.