Comments on: Clocks that Run Backwards (and other innovations) http://hostilefork.com/2010/07/18/clocks-that-run-backwards/ a disgruntled developer taking a stand in the information multiverse Fri, 18 May 2012 04:59:22 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5 By: Hostile Fork http://hostilefork.com/2010/07/18/clocks-that-run-backwards/#comment-1257 Hostile Fork Tue, 05 Apr 2011 20:19:13 +0000 http://hostilefork.com/?p=138#comment-1257 Glad you remember. It's interesting that this movement is getting momentum decades later and I would have met personally the person with the biggest push for it (as a reaction to "pi day"). Coincidence, or psychic phenomenon? :) I'm on the fence as to whether understanding the tradeoffs involved is the real baby in this particular bathwater. This (obvious?) mistake could be seen as a bit of a "hazing"...a way of saying that if your mind is not able to correct for something so minor then you probably shouldn't be pursuing math. I hear your point about the dot. Yes, in a "pure" math foundation I feel like this constant has more ownership of the circle than zero does. It's fun to think of total reinvention, what one could do if one started all over: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JDY1KvoQYk "Lose the earthquakes, keep the faults... Fill the oceans, without the salt..." History starts now. Glad you remember. It’s interesting that this movement is getting momentum decades later and I would have met personally the person with the biggest push for it (as a reaction to “pi day”). Coincidence, or psychic phenomenon? :)

I’m on the fence as to whether understanding the tradeoffs involved is the real baby in this particular bathwater. This (obvious?) mistake could be seen as a bit of a “hazing”…a way of saying that if your mind is not able to correct for something so minor then you probably shouldn’t be pursuing math.

I hear your point about the dot. Yes, in a “pure” math foundation I feel like this constant has more ownership of the circle than zero does. It’s fun to think of total reinvention, what one could do if one started all over:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JDY1KvoQYk

“Lose the earthquakes,
keep the faults…
Fill the oceans,
without the salt…”

History starts now.

]]> By: Ben http://hostilefork.com/2010/07/18/clocks-that-run-backwards/#comment-1256 Ben Sat, 02 Apr 2011 08:59:37 +0000 http://hostilefork.com/?p=138#comment-1256 I sat in on the talk. I offered the Greek pronunciation of the Greek letter as a suitable name for the modified constant. Children like to say it. I vote for redefinining pi based on the space-time constants c and G when and if kids do light speed on a regular basis, sincerely. Since they'll all have shuttles with the same turning radius, it'll make it physical for them and maintain the count of practical constants they need, too. But check out the Wolfram math site http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Hypersphere.html - the second paragraph is an apology for the difference in terminology some physics and some math people stumbled over a while back. If you have to draw the dot with the circle, is that exta geometrical object the same as a 2? STEM ed, I think, uses dichotomies like this to move along students' understanding. Hodson (in _Teaching and Learning about Science_, 2009 Sense Publishers, p. 289) calls it arguing to learn. Which, he points out, requires you read his previous chapter about learning to argue, in the fashion of a scientist. The urgency and importance of the distinctions between the two systems, that's what I think I'd benefit from having others learn. You've actually got me in fits about that half-of-a-2pi factor in the Fourier transform now. If America needs more of that, how does one transmit the caring part? I don't model desirability well. I sat in on the talk. I offered the Greek pronunciation of the Greek letter as a suitable name for the modified constant. Children like to say it.

I vote for redefinining pi based on the space-time constants c and G when and if kids do light speed on a regular basis, sincerely. Since they’ll all have shuttles with the same turning radius, it’ll make it physical for them and maintain the count of practical constants they need, too.

But check out the Wolfram math site http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Hypersphere.html - the second paragraph is an apology for the difference in terminology some physics and some math people stumbled over a while back. If you have to draw the dot with the circle, is that exta geometrical object the same as a 2?

STEM ed, I think, uses dichotomies like this to move along students’ understanding. Hodson (in _Teaching and Learning about Science_, 2009 Sense Publishers, p. 289) calls it arguing to learn. Which, he points out, requires you read his previous chapter about learning to argue, in the fashion of a scientist.

The urgency and importance of the distinctions between the two systems, that’s what I think I’d benefit from having others learn. You’ve actually got me in fits about that half-of-a-2pi factor in the Fourier transform now. If America needs more of that, how does one transmit the caring part? I don’t model desirability well.

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