Wednesday, March 2, 2011

More Math Methods

I guess similar to my last post, you could say that the humans and dancers comment is sort of like one of those If/Then statements. If we are humans then we must be dancers... which would be false. It would be; If they are dancers, then they must be humans... which I also sort of proved false with my dog story. Anyway, that isn't really the point. What I want to know is, how come nobody accepts the "guess and check" method as a legitimate means of figuring something out once you reach 15 years old? I guess scientists formulate some idea of what an outcome will be when they are conducting experiments and then check if they are right, but it's not really like a random guess. It would be funny if my boss asked me how I came up with the multiplier for leasable vs. usable square footage and I just say, well I used guess and check. It'd be cool if I said that and actually knew how I came up with the answer and was just messing with him, but I am pretty sure it wouldn't have the desired humorous affect. While we are on the topic of mathematic means, how come people are always asking for the average...but they never really ask for the mean? Yeah, I know that's the same thing as the average. And you never here them ask for the mode... you hear median sometimes but never mean or mode. Maybe it's just not in my line of work. Next time someone asks you how many people were at the bar, just say, "well I'd say the mean was about 65 tops." I guess that might be better suited for a guess and check though.

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