Vixen
Penultimate Amazing
I don't see why I should have to put up with unwarranted abuse.
Split Thread Conspiracy theories about unconventional usage of notation
- Thread starter Steve
- Start date
I don't see why I should have to put up with unwarranted abuse.
LondonJohn
Penultimate Amazing
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1) It's not "abuse". It's a pushback against your false claims.
2) It's not "unwarranted". Your claims are false, and thus they warrant challenging.
LondonJohn
Penultimate Amazing
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So you see, your "expert source" (whoever he or she might be...) explicitly states that ' denotes minutes and '' denotes seconds.
How are you doing with your search for a reliable source showing that '' can be used for minutes "in certain contexts"?
And if by "out" you mean "out to lunch", I completely understand and commiserate.
MarkCorrigan
Героям слава!
It's not abuse and it certainly isn't unwarranted. You keep claiming that people are being mean and abusing you but it only ever happens when you're being pressed to support your arguments. That you have no problem denigrating others makes the ploy all the more obvious.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
If you think you are being abused, report the post for moderation. Otherwise quit whining.
You are not being abused. You are being held accountable for inconsistent and factually disprovable claims you have made. Asking you to supply evidence for those claims, and pointing out your inability and unwillingness to do so, is not abuse. It is, in fact, how unsupported claims are detected and rejected. Doing so is the stated goal of skeptics and the major objective of this forum. By continuing to post in this forum for thousands of posts, you are effectively consenting to the process.
You have claimed ″ can be properly used to indicate either seconds or minutes of time, depending on "context." You have claimed that this is something your critics should have known, and something that others besides you have done historically.
Do you have any verifiable evidence for your claim? If so provide it, or admit that your usage is incorrect, and was incorrect when you first undertook it in this forum.
This thread exists in the larger context of your proposal to judge the work of others in fields in which you cannot demonstrate even minimal competence. Your willingness to concede the relevant errors when challenged speaks to the degree to which you can expect to command attention for that judgment. Your conduct during the examination of your factual allegations—which includes your willingness to change your story, invent clearly fradulent "experts," and complain wrongly of "abuse"—speaks to your motives for judging the work of your betters. It cannot be, as you state, merely to raise questions or to legitimately challenge work that you argue is not acceptable in the relevant expert fields.
Do you concede that ″ cannot correctly be used to indicate minutes of time? Do you concede that you are unqualified to question the work of experts in the fields of physics and forensic engineering? Do you concede that your behavior in this and other threads questions your integrity to do so with unbiased motives? If the answers to each of these questions is no, then supply evidence to support your claims and quit whining that skeptics are properly asking for it.
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jeremyp
Philosopher
I’ve seen it used for feet in precisely one context and it caused hilarity to ensue later. Had it been an accepted thing that you can shift the ‘ and the “, the set maker would have queried the measurement and no hilarity would have ensued.
Vixen
Penultimate Amazing
I am not really sure why this has been singled out for a thread of its own. It arose because someone across the pond had never heard of primes being used to signify duration of time. At least JayUtah was honest enough to admit to having heard of it. Whether correct or erroneous, I am unsure why people didn't just move on. Today, of course the US-led generation are now forced to spell the thing out almost in full as people have no idea of convention, so one has to write 'hr' and 'min' when in the old days of writing stuff by hand shorthand notation was the friend of scholars, although, thankfully, I don't go so far back as to have had to use the slide rule, as some of my accountancy tutors had had to prove proficiency in same in exams. There was a moment of horror when near long-forgotten logarithms turned up, in having to demonstrate proficiency in calculating learning curves. I have to say, it was actually nice to put maths into everyday practice.
Simply not true, as anyone reading the OP and the first few posts can see for themselves.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Singled out solely because a moderator made it so. The length of this thread has been due entirely to your unwillingness to admit a simple, otherwise inconsequential mistake.
No, that's not what happened. You used an outdated notation incorrectly while trying to be clever. Consequently, some were amused. Many were confused. Whichever the case, it's because you were wrong. Rather than admit one simple mistake, you thought you could turn it into yet another Vixen Knows Best episode. You remain oblivious to the prospect that the confusion you engendered was not because everyone except you is ignorant, but because you were wrong.
Blatantly untrue.
Because you didn't. Rather than say, "Oops, I meant to write the symbol for minutes," you doubled down. At first you tried to make everyone else seem ignorant for not knowing that ″ could indicate minutes of time. Then you tried to explain away your error with a string of ever more obviously fictitious claims, for which you refuse to provide the slightest evidence and which you're still perpetuating. Insisting that we should just all overlook your comical attempts to flex at our expense is itself pretty funny.
It persists because many seem to consider this incident an indication of your overall annoying behavior at this forum. We've lost count of the number of topics you're ignorant of, yet insist on pontificating about in the apparent desire to appear smart and superior. You've chosen to do so amidst skeptics, who are both motivated and equipped to test dubious claims. Then you play the victim whenever you're questioned or exposed. It's not everyone else's fault that some believe such immature behavior should not pass unchallenged in a skeptics forum.
If you're now—at long last—willing to admit that ″ does not mean minutes of time and never has—anywhere at any time—then maybe we can get somewhere. But since you still seem to be trying to prove your own superiority by selectively recalling the facts, you're still going to meet with proper resistance.
[Blah blah slide rules blah blah]
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wollery
Protected by Samurai Hedgehogs!
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Complete and utter cobblers from start to finish.
Why lie about things that are documented right here in this very thread for all to check and see?
MarkCorrigan
Героям слава!
Vixen, why are you lying yet again?
BazBear
Possible Suspect
Spinal Tap's Stonehenge?
smartcooky
Penultimate Amazing
Indeed!
Vixen forgets that there are actual, real-world qualified and licensed engineers on this forum, some of whom have degrees in their specialist fields.... we deal with things like Standard Form, SI units, and scientific and engineering notation in our work on a daily basis... WE KNOW WHAT WE ARE ******* WELL TALKING ABOUT!!!
This argument reminds me of Dara OBriain's quip about dentists;
"A bloke who's a professor of dentistry for forty years does not have a debate with some eejit who removes his teeth with string and a door"
When a lay person such as Vixen is told by several licensed engineers that she is wrong on some aspect of engineering, THEN SHE IS WRONG! End of story!
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
It's not really an engineering question, since no one has used primes notation for timekeeping for 50 years. But for some applications—like preparing students to take the FE exam—the history and practice of notation becomes important.
Vixen tried to be clever by using an outdated notation. She used it wrong, confused a bunch of people by doing so, and has never stopped smugly insisting she's the one trying to teach people something they didn't know. I'm just amazed at how effortlessly someone can lie and still claim to hold the high moral ground.
Vixen tried to be clever by using an outdated notation. She used it wrong, confused a bunch of people by doing so, and has never stopped smugly insisting she's the one trying to teach people something they didn't know. I'm just amazed at how effortlessly someone can lie and still claim to hold the high moral ground.
Mashuna
Ovis ex Machina
You're fortunate to not have to deal with politicians.
Nowhere Man
Critical Thinker
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- 297
Our Subaru Forester displays the time it has been in "gas saver" mode (I.e., engine stopped while not moving) in Xh Y' Z" format. It's the only thing I've seen lately that does it this way.
Fred
Fred
And unsurprisingly, it still uses what was the old convention. Not one where double primes meant minutes instead of seconds.
And this subject could have been avoided simply by Vixen admitting that the initial use of double primes to denote minutes had been a typo (face it, most people have brainfarts or typos sometimes). But the doubling down, as well as frankly laughable claims about everyone else's ignorance was telling.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Congratulations! You may have found a rare modern example of that notation.
You can see for yourself in this instructional video posted on Subaru's YouTube channel.
At around 1:33 you can see the time interval in primes notation at the top of the multifunction display in the center of the binnacle. It's counting seconds upward. Hour and minute are zero in this example, but 0h is not displayed at all and instead you see 00′ for minutes.
Then at 1:41 you see the driver cycling through menu options and a trip duration is briefly displayed as 00h 01′. Don't blink, or you'll miss it. This isn't the engine-off duration, as nearly as I can tell, but rather the ongoing trip duration shown briefly as the driver goes to bring up the auto-start controls.
This would have been the perfect time to use Vixen's purported, "It depends on context." In the previous display, seconds are counting upward as they pass. They're clearly seconds. In the second display, hours and minutes would have been the natural units for a trip duration, and could have reused ′ and ″ in that capacity if it were kosher to do so. But in this case—and as is appropriate for all cases—the designers have kept the proper units and the proper notation. That way there's little potential for misunderstanding, as people have realized for centuries while using this notation.
Indeed, Vixen's latest backpedal seems to be that it doesn't matter whether she was right or wrong, her critics have improperly made a big deal out of it and should have just moved on. The issue is not—and never has been—simply that she made a mistake. The issue is that she went to absurd lengths to insist she hadn't, all the while calling into question the knowledge and skill of others. The larger issue is that she argues the same way when it does count.
Vixen, like so many other useless armchair detectives, seems to want to pretend she's ferreting out a hidden truth and holding powerful interests accountable to it. Certainly we neither cannot nor should not prevent people from taking an interest in and commenting upon things that happen in our world. But for a select and annoying few, this exercise seems to take the form of pontificating from a position of abject ignorance and going to extraordinary and childish lengths to make it stick, at the expense of people who genuinely do know what they're talking about. It becomes more about aggrandizing the self-appointed detective than about finding out what really happened. It's more about a person's fanatical desire to seem to get the right answer, no matter what the facts say. Dragging out her crackpot notions of how properly to use primes notation and who knew it first is just an example of such self-centered behavior.
And if you behave that way in a skeptics forum, you'll be criticized for it. Behaving that way, knowing what criticism is likely to follow, and then complaining about being "abused" by such criticism... Well, there's a word for that.
Vixen
Penultimate Amazing
Here's some homework for you.
Question 1. Using Base-60 ONLY, show how you would annotate a value of zero using primes.
Question 2. Most posters were only aware that primes were used in denoting time durations in primes as a short hand. - for example, in jotting down race times on sports day - when composer John Gage's 4'33" was pointed out. Task: taking care to take note of the above in Question 1, , describe how John Cage might have annotated zero hours in his title.
Let me know how you get on.
LondonJohn
Penultimate Amazing
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- May 12, 2010
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- 21,162
Here's some homework for you.
Question 1. Using Base-60 ONLY, show how you would annotate a value of zero using primes.
Question 2. Most posters were only aware that primes were used in denoting time durations in primes as a short hand. - for example, in jotting down race times on sports day - when composer John Gage's 4'33" was pointed out. Task: taking care to take note of the above in Question 1, , describe how John Cage might have annotated zero hours in his title.
Let me know how you get on.
1) 0
2) 0h4'33''
Let me know how you get on assimilating the answers.