Not signed in (Sign In to the Green Building Forum)
Categories
- General
- Essential for Newbies
- Building Regulations and Standards
- Commercial build
- Data and monitoring
- Downshifting
- Energy Assessment
- Events and Courses
- Fundamentals
- Green Building Bible
- Green Building magazine
- Green Living
- Heating and cooling
- Housing - New Build
- Housing - Renovation
- Offers and wants
- Politics
- Products
- Renewable Energy
Vanilla 1.1.4 is a product of Lussumo. More Information: Documentation, Community Support.
Welcome to new Forum Visitors
Join the forum now and benefit from discussions with thousands of other green building fans and discounts on Green Building Press publications:: Apply now.
Join the forum now and benefit from discussions with thousands of other green building fans and discounts on Green Building Press publications:: Apply now.
-
-
CommentAuthorSteamyTea
- CommentTimeFeb 11th 2012 edited
Interesting take on making decisions:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120210133346.htm -
-
- CommentAuthorJoiner
- CommentTimeFeb 11th 2012
Maths?
Invented by a mathematician to give them something to do!
God then invented statisticians so that mathematicians had someone to argue with.
-
- CommentAuthorowlman
- CommentTimeFeb 11th 2012
There are ten types of people who undertand Binary,---those who do, and those who dont.
or,
Did you hear about the Mathemetician and the Farmer who were sitting in a train when it passed a flock of sheep. The mathematician said there are 1,248 sheep in that flock. That's amazing said the farmer it so happens that's my field and my sheep and I know you're right, how did you do that. Oh says the Mathematician that was easy, I just counted the number of legs and divided by four.
-
-
CommentAuthorSteamyTea
- CommentTimeFeb 11th 2012
One average people have less than 2 legs.
I get the feeling that maths is considered a joke, must get some data on that
-
-
- CommentAuthorJoiner
- CommentTimeFeb 11th 2012
No Nick. It's a case of if you didn't laugh you'd cry.
-
-
CommentAuthorJSHarris
- CommentTimeFeb 11th 2012
The problem is that people (especially politicians and pressure groups) are very fond of misusing mathematics and statistics in an attempt to either prove a point or retrospectively justify an unjustifiable action.
The infamous rubbish "hockey stick" curve that the imbeciles in DECC presented to the Select Committee being a good example (and I still think that PS should have been disciplined for misleading parliament like that). -
-
- CommentAuthorNick Parsons
- CommentTimeFeb 11th 2012
+1 -
- CommentAuthorEd Davies
- CommentTimeFeb 11th 2012
Another problem is that too often numbers, particularly large numbers, are given without context. If people understood the need to remember a few rough numbers (e.g., population of the country, power use, years since the last ice age, whatever is relevant...) they'd have a much better chance of hanging those numbers on sensible hooks and not getting bamboozled.
E.g., the other day I got a Guardian article corrected: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2012/jan/26/newt-gingrich-moon-base-dream when it said NASA's spending in the 1960s was 3.45% of GDP. I just knew that couldn't be right as NASA spending is a pretty small fraction of US military spending so they'd have been spending a huge percentage of GDP on the military. A quick look showed that actually it was 3.45% of Federal spending which is, in turn, about 1/5th of GDP. Clearly the original journalist and any fact checkers who looked over the article didn't have the context to spot the error. However, plus points to them for giving the amount as a percentage rather than just quoting so many billions of dollars.
1 to 8 of 8
