Split Thread Conspiracy theories about unconventional usage of notation

[MBDK]

I am a chartered professional and not given to dishonesty of any form.

Well, from the evidence I have read in this thread, THAT statement calls into question whether, along the lines of your curious conflation of primes notatations, you were also taught a definition of "dishonesty" different than the standard one the rest of the world recognizes? But then, also based on the "unconventional" nature of your posts, I can accept that you were indeed subject to "special" schooling.

But to test these musings a bit more thoroughly, do you admit that the directions/nomenclatures for starboard and port actually DO apply within a ship's hull?

 

[JimOfAllTrades]

Just did.

Copy -> paste into Word, no other actions on my part.
The degree symbol is still present where it belongs.

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_2746663b3ff45339e8.jpg[/qimg]

And the original in the PDF for comparison.
[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_2746663b3ffdbba0ae.jpg[/qimg]

It really looks like the changing of the ° sign into " is something done on your side of the process.

To be fair, they did change for me, at least sometimes.

I copied the paragraph three slightly different ways and in two of the three copies some of the degree signs were in fact changed into a double quote.

First, I simply clicked on the link which displayed the PDF in the Edge browser. Then I copied the paragraph (using Ctrl-C) into a new Word document (an older version of Word from Office 2010, not the current Office 365). Two of the three degree symbols were changed to double quotes, one was omitted entirely.

Second, I downloaded the PDF to my local drive and opened it on Acrobat Pro, then copied the paragraph (again using Ctrl=C) into the same version of Word. Same results, two degree symbols changed, one omitted entirely.

Lastly, from the same open PDF in Acrobat Pro, I again copied the paragraph, but right-clicked and chose the option to "Copy With Formatting". When I pasted the paragraph into that same version of Word all three degree symbols were correct.

So things can change when copying from application to application. Indeed after making my living in computer software development and support for 40 years, I'm always a little surprised it works as well as it does as often as it does.

However this does not change my opinion that Vixen's nearly continuous unfounded speculation, sloppiness in reporting, conclusion jumping, and an apparent complete inability to admit any error no matter how small makes her arguments unworthy of much consideration.

 

[JayUtah]

To be fair, they did change for me, at least sometimes.

I copied the paragraph three slightly different ways and in two of the three copies some of the degree signs were in fact changed into a double quote.

It didn't happen for me, but I'll take your experience as evidence in Vixen's favor. My own experiments were less thorough. I withdraw the pertinent claim in re Vixen's transcription of Mr Justice Sheen's report.

However this does not change my opinion that Vixen's nearly continuous unfounded speculation, sloppiness in reporting, conclusion jumping, and an apparent complete inability to admit any error no matter how small makes her arguments unworthy of much consideration.

That's the gist of this thread. The claim that ′ can be used properly to indicate hours and ″ can be used properly to indicate minutes is simply wrong. But she will neither withdraw her claim nor substantiate it. Therefore she is not a credible critic.

 

[JimOfAllTrades]

That's the gist of this thread. The claim that ′ can be used properly to indicate hours and ″ can be used properly to indicate minutes is simply wrong. But she will neither withdraw her claim nor substantiate it. Therefore she is not a credible critic.

Agree 100%. To add my small data point, I've never seen it used that way, and though I'm not an expert (see below **) I've certainly read lots of technical papers over the years.

Despite actually trying pretty hard, I make typos and other minor mistakes all the time. That's why on anything critical or for distribution to anyone out the company I always get someone else to proofread. And mistakes still slip out (hell, there's probably at least one in the post you quoted and I corrected a couple before I posted).

How hard is it to say "oops, sorry, typo", or "oops, sorry, was thinking about something else", or "oops, sorry, my mistake" or whatever?

Combining that with some severe credulousness and Dunning-Kruger is a recipe for reputation disaster.

** I had no real idea of the history of the primes notation, I didn't even know it had an official name. Learn something every day. Thanks!

 

[Mojo]

Agree 100%. To add my small data point, I've never seen it used that way, and though I'm not an expert (see below **) I've certainly read lots of technical papers over the years.

Despite actually trying pretty hard, I make typos and other minor mistakes all the time. That's why on anything critical or for distribution to anyone out the company I always get someone else to proofread.

Speaking of which, I notice that Vixen never addressed this question:

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

 

[JimOfAllTrades]

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

Is that the new sonic yard-trimmer technology I've been hearing about?

 

[CORed]

It didn't happen for me, but I'll take your experience as evidence in Vixen's favor. My own experiments were less thorough. I withdraw the pertinent claim in re Vixen's transcription of Mr Justice Sheen's report.



That's the gist of this thread. The claim that ′ can be used properly to indicate hours and ″ can be used properly to indicate minutes is simply wrong. But she will neither withdraw her claim nor substantiate it. Therefore she is not a credible critic.

It's pretty standard to use ' for minutes and " for seconds when using those as units of angle or arc, but I don't think I've ever seen them used for minutes or seconds as units of time (and that would not be what Vixen claimed anyway).

 

[JayUtah]

Speaking of which, I notice that Vixen never addressed this question:

You may have to repeat the question loudly. Try turning it up to 11.

Vixen is quite happy with the notion that ′ always indicates feet and ″ always indicates inches, and that we can omit the unused, unnormalized yards because these two symbols are unmistakable for length measurements regardless of any variation in context. She is correct there.

But when notating time duration using the same system, she insists there is no similar rule. (Hint: there is.) She claims that for time duration, ′ can mean either hours or minutes, depending on context, and that ″ can mean either minutes or seconds, depending on the same context. The notion of context she advocates is that the reader is just supposed to know what duration of time would be compatible with the value stated. So a statement,

John finished the race in 4′ 33″.​

obviously means the race was for a mile and John ran it in four minutes thirty-three seconds, because that would be a reasonably understood context. Except that the race was actually a marathon and John ran it in four hours, thirty-three minutes, and the notation is exactly and ambiguously unchanged. Vixen hasn't explained how seconds would be notated in that case under her foisted vernacular usage.

For someone to state that Cage's innovative avant-garde musical piece is implicitly understood "from context" to last only four minutes and thirty-three seconds—because the context is a musical piece and that's a reasonable inference for the duration of a musical piece—simply means the person hasn't attended a Wagner opera before. We know the notated title is properly pronounced, "Four minutes, thirty-three seconds," not because there is some ineffable context at work here, but because ′ always means minutes of time and ″ always means seconds of time.

The attempt to interpolate vague contextual clues is merely more evidence that Vixen is out of her element when it comes to all things technical. She says context is all-important. That is exactly the opposite of the direction in which technical standards have pushed for the past century. What's all-important these days is for units and symbols to be unique, standardized, and unambiguous.

 

[CORed]

You may have to repeat the question loudly. Try turning it up to 11.

Vixen is quite happy with the notion that ′ always indicates feet and ″ always indicates inches, and that we can omit the unused, unnormalized yards because these two symbols are unmistakable for length measurements regardless of any variation in context. She is correct there.

But when notating time duration using the same system, she insists there is no similar rule. (Hint: there is.) She claims that for time duration, ′ can mean either hours or minutes, depending on context, and that ″ can mean either minutes or seconds, depending on the same context. The notion of context she advocates is that the reader is just supposed to know what duration of time would be compatible with the value stated. So a statement,

John finished the race in 4′ 33″.​

obviously means the race was for a mile and John ran it in four minutes thirty-three seconds, because that would be a reasonably understood context. Except that the race was actually a marathon and John ran it in four hours, thirty-three minutes, and the notation is exactly and ambiguously unchaged. Vixen hasn't explained how seconds would be notated in that case under her foisted vernacular usage.

For someone to state that Cage's innovative avant-garde musical piece is implicitly understood "from context" to last only four minutes and thirty-three seconds—because the context is a musical piece and that's a reasonable inference for the duration of a musical piece—simply means the person hasn't attended a Wagner opera before. We know the notated title is properly pronounced, "Four minutes, thirty-three seconds," not because there is some ineffable context at work here, but because ′ always means minutes of time and ″ always means seconds of time.

The attempt to interpolate vague contextual clues is merely more evidence that Vixen is out of her element when it comes to all things technical. She says context is all-important. That is exactly the opposite of the direction in which technical standards have pushed for the past century. What's all-important these days is for units and symbols to be unique, standardized, and unambiguous.

I can't imagine a surer recipe for disaster than having ambiguous, context-sensitive notation for time, with the ambiguity introducing an error of a factor of sixty if misinterpreted. I'm glad that ambiguity exists only in Vixen's mind.

 

[JayUtah]

It's pretty standard to use ' for minutes and " for seconds when using those as units of angle or arc, but I don't think I've ever seen them used for minutes or seconds as units of time (and that would not be what Vixen claimed anyway).

Yes, we went through this at some length in the MS Estonia thread from which this thread has been separated as (arguably) off-topic.

We still use and accept primes notation for angles. We even have ‴ and ⁗ for angles, but we don't use them anymore because they were not standardized. In one system (astronomy) they continued the sexagesimal divisions, and in another system (navigation) the arcsecond was divided first into thirds, and then the thirds were divided into further fourths. Nowadays we decimalize the seconds value, or more properly, we decimalize the degrees and do away with non-decimal divisions altogether.

Several people, including myself, remarked that we were not taught primes notation for time durations. Vixen wrongly concluded that meant we had never heard of it, or that we were contending that such a system was never used. And she seems committed to dying on that hill. However, I and others did mention that we were aware of the system. That's not the same as correctly stating that primes notation is no longer taught and seldom used for that purpose in modern times (i.e., the past century).

Vixen has further conflated that question with her claim that 35″ could properly denote minutes of time instead of seconds of time (or, facetiously, inches of distance). She seems delighted that her possession of arcane knowledge—i.e., that primes notation was used at all to denote time durations—has stymied her critics who were never taught it. But she seems desperate to keep that front and center, in place of her use of the wrong symbol in that notation to denote minutes. This is causing no end of amusement as she concocts ever more incredible stories, and resorts more to histrionics, to sidestep the facts.

 

[JayUtah]

I can't imagine a surer recipe for disaster than having ambiguous, context-sensitive notation for time, with the ambiguity introducing an error of a factor of sixty if misinterpreted. I'm glad that ambiguity exists only in Vixen's mind.

It's very antithetical to science. How do the kids say it today? "Tell me you don't know anything about science without telling me."

I'm certain the "rule" saying ″ can mean either minutes or seconds depending on context exists only in Vixen's mind. I'm certain she invented it, because there does exist a standard for primes notation for time. But she claims the either-or option was the common usage at her school, tolerated by instructors and examiners. I find this extremely improbable on its face. But in any case, she has been challenged to provide evidence to support that claim. She has not obliged, and has chosen instead to tell further tall tales about false accusations (the aforementioned histrionics).

 

[Manger Douse]

.

** I had no real idea of the history of the primes notation, I didn't even know it had an official name. Learn something every day. Thanks!

This. I'm hoping we get some more moonbats around here so I can learn more about Apollo. Does anyone else picture Jay in that powdered wig while he's laying the slap down? Like that Samuel Johnson meme

 

[JayUtah]

Agree 100%. To add my small data point, I've never seen it used that way, and though I'm not an expert (see below **) I've certainly read lots of technical papers over the years.

As I mentioned in one thread or another, I first ran across it when I was in high school—not as part of any course of instruction, but in leisure reading as the timings for competitive rowing races. As I recall, the book was from the 1940s or 1950s, but it contained facsimile result reports from decades previously. When you see something like

Distance | Rower | Year | Time
5,000 yds|E. Cummerbund|1923|27′ 52″

it's not hard to infer "minutes and seconds," especially if (like me) you were already well into a scientific/technical education and understood angle measurements that use the same symbols for the same divisions.

Much later, when preparing engineering students for their licensing exams, I read in the preparation materials for teachers and examiners how the primes system evolved, how it was standardized, and the many problems it was expected to solve. This was merely historical context for the discussion of standards that have supplanted primes notation for time duration. Yes, it was standardized. No, ″ cannot change its meaning according to "context." Vixen's usage is wrong.

How hard is it to say "oops, sorry, typo", or "oops, sorry, was thinking about something else", or "oops, sorry, my mistake" or whatever?

Very hard if your goal is not really to determine why MS Estonia sank, but instead to use conspiracy theories about it as a crutch to try to convince everyone that you're smarter than you really are. If that's the case, then you can never admit to an error, no matter how insignificant.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

Or, hypothetically speaking, if you're a Walt.

 

[zooterkin]

This is like debating with someone who claims Paris is not the capital of France. In fact, the arguer vehemently affirms, he has never heard of Paris and therefore it does not exist! The astonishing thing about arguing against something that is an established fact is that someone should wear their ignorance of Paris as a crown.

Indeed it is.

 

[erwinl]

To be fair, they did change for me, at least sometimes.

I copied the paragraph three slightly different ways and in two of the three copies some of the degree signs were in fact changed into a double quote.

First, I simply clicked on the link which displayed the PDF in the Edge browser. Then I copied the paragraph (using Ctrl-C) into a new Word document (an older version of Word from Office 2010, not the current Office 365). Two of the three degree symbols were changed to double quotes, one was omitted entirely.

Second, I downloaded the PDF to my local drive and opened it on Acrobat Pro, then copied the paragraph (again using Ctrl=C) into the same version of Word. Same results, two degree symbols changed, one omitted entirely.

Lastly, from the same open PDF in Acrobat Pro, I again copied the paragraph, but right-clicked and chose the option to "Copy With Formatting". When I pasted the paragraph into that same version of Word all three degree symbols were correct.

So things can change when copying from application to application. Indeed after making my living in computer software development and support for 40 years, I'm always a little surprised it works as well as it does as often as it does.

However this does not change my opinion that Vixen's nearly continuous unfounded speculation, sloppiness in reporting, conclusion jumping, and an apparent complete inability to admit any error no matter how small makes her arguments unworthy of much consideration.

Hmmm.
For me it worked well, as you could see (aside from a minor problem with the word 'expected'), but I concede your point.

Problem is that the PDF is just a scan of the original and does not contain text as such. Other than what is automatically generated when trying to select the text, that is.

The other, much bigger, problem is that Vixen does not care enough to check whether the vital numbers she wants to work with have been copied correctly.

As we can read in her in her words

.....or thought it important......

.

 

[JayUtah]

The other, much bigger, problem is that Vixen does not care enough to check whether the vital numbers she wants to work with have been copied correctly.

As we can read in her in her words .

Yes, Vixen is careless, cavalier, and poorly informed on this and many other subjects. But for the purpose of one of the arguments I laid out here, Vixen's substitution of " for ° when transcribing Mr Justice Sheen's report would have needed to be intentional. The (secondary) point being made was that Vixen has a pattern of misusing notation, the misquotation of Sheen being one example. Insisting that "FX" is a bona fide screenplay notation is another. Rewriting the rules for primes notation as applied to time duration would be a third.

Vixen proffered an affirmative defense in the Sheen report case, claiming that the " was not intentional, but happened instead as a consequence of inherently problematic optical character recognition. I agree that evidence developed by others in this thread is credible and meets the burden of proof for that affirmative defense. Consequently I withdrew the claim. It was rebutted with reasoning and evidence that I found persuasive.

And yes, I'm easygoing on that point because it's subordinate to the more pressing matter: Vixen's use of ′ to possibly express hours of time and ″ to possibly express minutes of time, supposedly determined by context, is both intentional and incorrect. That point stands regardless of whether such an intentional misuse falls into a larger pattern of misuse involving other notations or abbreviations.

The main point remains that in primes notation for time, ′ invariably indicates minutes and ″ invariably indicates seconds, and her claim that her 35″ should have been properly understood to say thirty-five minutes is contravened by the relevant standard and unsupported by evidence. Her proffered affirmative defense that it was nevertheless common at her school is unsupported by evidence.

 

[Carrot Flower King]

5 pages? Really? 5 sodding pages?

Just don't mention post codes in the West Midlands nor how to measure them.

 

[JayUtah]

I regard U.K. postal codes as an entirely black art. I just assume the owls know where to go.

 

[GlennB]

5 pages? Really? 5 sodding pages?

Just don't mention post codes in the West Midlands nor how to measure them.

And, whatever you do, don't mention Cockney rhyming slang.