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version seven. http://demongin.org |
If You Can't Do the Math
...then get out of the equation. No, seriously: a blog post about cognition, chaos, &c. that ends with hilarious puns.
Tuesday, 2009-09-29 | Philosophy, Science, Social Studies
| You might be wondering why Perl bothers supporting octal and hexadecimal notation. Here's the answer: Computers store numbers in memory in binary (base 2) notation, not decimal (base 10) notation. Because 8 and 16 are multiples of 2, it is easier to represent stored computer memory in base 8 or base 16 than in base 10. (You could use base 2, of course; however, base 2 numbers are clumsy because they are very long.) |
| David Till, "Teach Yourself Perl 5 in 21 days" |
I've never had much of a head for arithmetic. I can keep variables straight in my head, but I'm just lousy at computation.
I am, however, a fairly dab hand at proofs and solutions. My high school record argues as much: it took me two years to get C's in "first year" algebra and then I spent at year the (literal) head of my geometry class before returning to the harsh arithmetical realities of trigonometry and struggling to earn passing marks.
One could certainly make the case, given the summary of my academic shortcomings provided above, that I just haven't got what's often called a "head for numbers". I think that's probably inaccurate or insufficient, however, as it jives conspicuously with my ability to recall historical dates, work with statistics-based facts and to tell the joke whose punchline goes, "a duck for a fuck, a fuck for a duck and five bucks for a fucked up duck."
I can keep track of numbers, I just can't compute them quickly or accurately.
At any rate, the point of all of this is that I'm also no good with cause and effect, i.e. prediction, and I think that these things are related.
I'm no expert on human cognition, but I think it's fair to make the case based on nothing more than casual observation of the human condition that the facility of the mind that allows for the speedy and accurate computation of numbers and the facility of the mind that allows for accurate predictions of causes and effects are, if not the same, then very closely related.
I gained this valuable insight lately after two conversations with people who I consider to be fairly gifted computer programmers. Both of them have an impressive ability to compute numbers. Both of them also have an impressive ability to look at a bit of syntax and, if they know the language, predict its outcome. And, not coincidentally, both of them have an unusual interest in predicting the reactions to human actions as well as the outcomes of human endeavors.
Me? I prefer chaos. And I don't mean that in a navel-gazing, Emo Cat, black lipstick-wearing sort of way, either. Rather, I enjoy randomness: I like surprises and I try to encourage randomness to be the guiding principle for whatever process randomness can logically guide. And I think I got into this habit because of my general lack of facility with predicting effects based on causes.
Basically, I think my preference for randomness has a lot to do with my general inability to perform computation tasks, such as the ones performed in arithmetic/algebra or in predicting effects from looking at their causes. I believe this because I have observed, not infrequently, that people with a preference for orderly outcomes and a knack for accurate predictions tend to dislike randomness. Or maybe, rather than "dislike", they just don't understand the appeal.
Uncharacteristically, I have been using this insight recently to better predict the actions of others.
Go figure.
