Posts Tagged ‘xkcd’
What you do know can hurt you…
From the ever-entertaining xkcd, a behavioral analog to the Monty Hall Problem (and the variation considered here a couple of weeks ago)…
As we reconsider the odds, we might recall that it was on this date in 1777 that Swiss mathematician, physicist, and astronomer Johann Heinrich Lambert died in Berlin. Lambert, who was only 49 when he passed, made a number of contributions to scientific knowledge; but he is probably best remembered for the first proof (in 1768) that pi is irrational (that’s to say, can’t be expressed as the quotient of two integers).
Show your work…
From the always-amusing xkcd
As we contemplate coincidence, we might pause to remember Chester Greenwood, who died on this date in 1937. One of the Smithsonian Institution’s “America’s 15 Outstanding Inventors,” Greenwood created the bottom whistling kettle, the mechanical mouse trap, and the spring steel rake, among many other indispensables. But he is best remembered as the inventor (at age 15) of earmuffs. By his mid-twenties, he had a factory and 11 workers producing Greenwood Champion Ear Protectors in his hometown of Farmington, ME, producing 50,000 earmuffs yearly; output grew to 400,000 pairs by the year he died. In 1977, the Maine state legislature officially declared the first day of Winter, December 21, “Chester Greenwood Day,” which Farmington celebrates with a parade.
No BONES about it…
From the ever-entertaining (and insightful) xkcd. (As to the allusion in the title of this post… a weakness to which your correspondent will confess.)
As we recalibrate our expectations of our instruments, we might acknowledge imprecision-in-practice, as it was on this date in 2001 that a Joint Session of Congress (with then Vice President Al Gore presiding) certified the election of George W. Bush…
And in an example of synchronicity that would light Arthur Koestler’s eyes, this was also the date on which, in 1936, Porky Pig made his debut in his commonly-known form in Tex Avery’s Gold Diggers of ’49. Porky had been introduced the prior year, but in a younger, quieter, and thinner incarnation, by Bob Clampitt (of later Beany and Cecil renown). Porky was voiced in (and immediately following) Avery’s toon by Joe Dougherty, who actually did have a stuttering problem. But because Dougherty could not control his stutter, his recording sessions took hours. Thus, the extraordinary Mel Blanc replaced Dougherty in 1937.
Ohm…
As we rethink the spelling of our mantras, we might tip our tiaras to Queen Elizabeth I– aka The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, and Good Queen Bess– the fifth and final ruler in the Tudor dynasty, who on this date in 1558 succeeded her half-sister Mary to the English throne, and began the long reign we know as the Elizabethan Era.
The Law of Large Numbers…
As we work on our routines, we might spare a commemorative thought for Ferdinand Magellan, whose expedition returned to Spain on this date in 1522, at the end of the first circumnavigation of the globe– almost three years to the day after the fleet– reduced to a single ship from the original five– had departed. Magellan never made it; he was killed by a poison dart in a battle on the island of Mactan in the Philippines in 1521.
Magellan's ship "Victoria"-- the one that made it
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