Author Topic: Arithmetic that makes you cringe  (Read 78054 times)

ian

Re: Arithmetic that makes you cringe
« Reply #75 on: 29 November, 2018, 06:20:38 pm »
Golden syrup is partially inverted.

You don't strictly need acid (water will donate the protons), though it'll speed up the hydrolysis.

hellymedic

  • Just do it!
Re: Arithmetic that makes you cringe
« Reply #76 on: 29 November, 2018, 06:58:10 pm »
Alexa lets you choose her temperature and distance units. I don't think she offers Kelvin or parsecs* though.

And yes, she should have said sucrose will melt/decompose (depending on the water content, moisture is how you get inversion, that's really the difference between making caramel and golden syrup).

*yes, yes, I know, but Han Solo is always going to be more right than you, so give it up.

invert sugar syrup also needs an acid to do the "inversion".  I'm not sure if golden syrup is inverted or not?

'Partially inverted refiners' syrup' if I recall the inscription on the Lyle's Golden Syrup correctly... ie a mixture of glucose, fructose & sucrose.

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: Arithmetic that makes you cringe
« Reply #77 on: 30 November, 2018, 07:34:46 am »
*yes, yes, I know, but Han Solo is always going to be more right than you, so give it up.

“Han Solo is dead.” - Nietzsche
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

ian

Re: Arithmetic that makes you cringe
« Reply #78 on: 30 November, 2018, 09:39:13 am »
Yes, and he's dead right.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Arithmetic that makes you cringe
« Reply #79 on: 30 November, 2018, 09:55:47 am »
Sugar is right, golden syrup is wrong, honey lives forever.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Re: Arithmetic that makes you cringe
« Reply #80 on: 30 November, 2018, 10:57:10 am »
Forgot to ask Alexa the question this morning to see what it says, will ask this evening when back home.
"Yes please" said Squirrel "biscuits are our favourite things."

ElyDave

  • Royal and Ancient Polar Bear Society member 263583
Re: Arithmetic that makes you cringe
« Reply #81 on: 01 December, 2018, 06:47:12 am »
Siri was surprisingly correct on this, vs it's usual ability to understand English

It directed me to a site that quite correctly pointed out that sugar does not boild but decomposes and caremelises, and refers to varying boiling point of syrups.

I may be being lulled into a false sense of security with Siri, heading for another disappointment
“Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him.” –Charles Dickens

Re: Arithmetic that makes you cringe
« Reply #82 on: 01 December, 2018, 07:08:52 am »
Anyone who watched the last series of Bake Off will have seen the little Amazon Alexa ads that bookended each commercial break. One of them had Our Intrepid Baker asking "Alexa, what's the boiling point of sugar?" to which Alexa replies "The boiling point of sugar is XXX degrees."

Now, leaving aside the fact that the question is nonsensical, since sugar doesn't have a boiling point as such, it really infuriated me that Alexa didn't specify the scale in her answer - I can't recall the exact figure quoted but I'm sure it must have been in Fahrenheit, which shouldn't be too surprising given that Alexa is Transpondian, but a) my old maths teacher would have given her a clout round the ear for such sloppiness, and b) it's the 21st feckin' century so use Celsius already. Anyway, I amused myself by imagining that Our Intrepid Baker guessed that Alexa was working in Kelvin and so put their sugar solution in the freezer to boil it...

I just tried this - Alexa told me it was 160° Celsius.

Pingu

  • Put away those fiery biscuits!
  • Mrs Pingu's domestique
    • the Igloo
Re: Arithmetic that makes you cringe
« Reply #83 on: 08 January, 2019, 07:28:27 pm »
‘Super-Earth’ among trio of planets and six supernovae detected by Tess mission

Quote
Three new planets and six supernovae outside our solar system have been observed by Nasa’s planet-hunting Tess mission in its first three months.

Well TFFT  ::-)

Pingu

  • Put away those fiery biscuits!
  • Mrs Pingu's domestique
    • the Igloo
Re: Arithmetic that makes you cringe
« Reply #84 on: 25 January, 2019, 10:08:35 pm »
BBC science bitches.


bbc_science by The Pingus, on Flickr

hellymedic

  • Just do it!
Re: Arithmetic that makes you cringe
« Reply #85 on: 20 February, 2019, 04:36:33 pm »
Since when was it 25 years from 1984 to 2018?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-47309945

ElyDave

  • Royal and Ancient Polar Bear Society member 263583
Re: Arithmetic that makes you cringe
« Reply #86 on: 20 February, 2019, 07:31:19 pm »
even 1998 when he was released to 2018 isn't 25 years
“Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him.” –Charles Dickens

Guy

  • Retired
Re: Arithmetic that makes you cringe
« Reply #87 on: 04 March, 2019, 03:19:59 pm »
The Daily Hate online has a picture article about WW2 fortifications. One of the captions starts

Quote
These two pictures show parts of a 1km (1.5 mile)-long anti-tank wall..

 :facepalm:
"The Opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject"  Marcus Aurelius

Tim Hall

  • Victoria is my queen
Re: Arithmetic that makes you cringe
« Reply #88 on: 07 March, 2019, 12:24:22 pm »
My own fault I guess for listening to "You and Your Things and Your Paranoia Yours".  However, they're just running an article about John Lewis and the bonus being paid this year. Apparently it's the lowest since 1953 at "Just 3%", while in the past it's been up as high   "as 20%".  3% of what wasn't disclosed though.  Gah.
There are two ways you can get exercise out of a bicycle: you can
"overhaul" it, or you can ride it.  (Jerome K Jerome)

Re: Arithmetic that makes you cringe
« Reply #89 on: 07 March, 2019, 01:26:46 pm »
3% of the recipient's annual salary.

They were clear enough about that on the news earlier, so maybe they just assume that anyone listening to Y&Y has had the Home Service on all day and will have absorbed these facts by osmosis.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Arithmetic that makes you cringe
« Reply #90 on: 11 April, 2019, 10:16:38 am »
Bataan regularly delivered; all four of his first five albums – Subway Joe (1968), Riot (1968), Poor Boy (1969) and Mr New York and The East Side Kids (1971) – were unambiguously about El Barrio, carrying images of the ghetto or everyday street life in New York.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Arithmetic that makes you cringe
« Reply #91 on: 04 June, 2019, 02:46:14 am »
I think this one is probably "Arithmetic that is too subtle for me." It's from a presentation of a medical trial. No one picked the presenter up on it, so I guess it makes sense to them.
Quote
There are four different domains: there is a bulbar domain, fine motor, gross motor and breathing, and all of these are scored 0 to 4, where 4 is normal function. So you have a maximum score of 48, which would be a normal person.
How is the maximum score 48 rather than 16?
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

ElyDave

  • Royal and Ancient Polar Bear Society member 263583
Re: Arithmetic that makes you cringe
« Reply #92 on: 04 June, 2019, 05:53:50 am »
being added to something else they forgotbtontell you about?

not so much makes me cringe, but one that played with my head recently. Zero factorial = 1.
the set-theory explanation makes sense, but the numerical solution I read was a fudge.
“Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him.” –Charles Dickens

Manotea

  • Where there is doubt...
Re: Arithmetic that makes you cringe
« Reply #93 on: 04 June, 2019, 07:28:42 am »
The thing to remember is that half the people you meet are below average.

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
Re: Arithmetic that makes you cringe
« Reply #94 on: 04 June, 2019, 07:34:08 am »
being added to something else they forgotbtontell you about?

not so much makes me cringe, but one that played with my head recently. Zero factorial = 1.
the set-theory explanation makes sense, but the numerical solution I read was a fudge.

This one doesn't seem too sweet to be wholesome: https://youtu.be/Mfk_L4Nx2ZI

The thing to remember is that half the people you meet are below average.

Top half or bottom half?
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

Beardy

  • Shedist
Re: Arithmetic that makes you cringe
« Reply #95 on: 04 June, 2019, 09:25:59 am »
The thing to remember is that half the people you meet are below average.
That largley depends on which average you are using.
For every complex problem in the world, there is a simple and easily understood solution that’s wrong.

Manotea

  • Where there is doubt...
Re: Arithmetic that makes you cringe
« Reply #96 on: 04 June, 2019, 07:17:36 pm »
Mrs F was never that much into Numbers and all.
She had to do a Tax module at Law School back in the day.

I remember trying to help out with the basic problem:

If something costs £100, and we add 10% tax, it then costs £110. That's fine.
But why can't I just remove the tax element by removing 10% of the £110?

She's still not convinced about the arithmetic, and suspects alien involvement.

I still find it working that if a share falls by 33%, say from 1.50 to 1, it needs to increase my by 50% to get back to where it was....

Re: Arithmetic that makes you cringe
« Reply #97 on: 30 September, 2019, 10:12:09 am »
The thing to remember is that half the people you meet are below average.
That largley depends on which average you are using.
Central limit theorem says that it doesn't matter whether you use mean, median or (grouped) mode, Manotea is right.

In other news
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-49874969
2 square metres is not 6.6 square feet...  The fact that they've tried to show the equivalence makes me think it was (2 metres) squared, which is 4 square metres, or 43 square feet.

Jaded

  • The Codfather
  • Formerly known as Jaded
Re: Arithmetic that makes you cringe
« Reply #98 on: 30 September, 2019, 11:18:06 am »
Surely 2 sq mtrs is 22 sq ft.

2 mtr sq is 43 sq ft.
It is simpler than it looks.

Re: Arithmetic that makes you cringe
« Reply #99 on: 30 September, 2019, 11:48:35 am »
Quote
The fact that they've tried to show the equivalence makes me think it was (2 metres) squared, which is 4 square metres, or 43 square feet.
That in itself leads to misunderstandings.  it is not 2 metres squared but 2 metres square which means it is a square with 2 metre sides.  I noticed this modern use of squared in one of those fly on the wall school programmes.   In the answer to a question, little Johnny replied "2 metres squared" when the correct answer would have been "2 square metres".  Little Johnny thought the 2 always meant squared.  Of course the teacher did not correct him.  Lets hope he never becomes a carpet fitter.