Is Mathematical pedanticism allowed in here?

[CouldIBEAnyMoreChaotic]

"Out of every £5 you spend £1 goes to the government."

Erm, no.

(Seen on a leaflet justifying price-hikes at a Cafe today.)

[cross]

[MoreBeta]

Oh yes. Mathematical pedantry is absolutley OK. In fact it should be mandatory as a public service.

The misuse and abuse of data, graphs and percentages on news programmes is shocking. In fact it is downright misleading at times and deliberately fostered by Govt and business to mislead the viewing public.

Journalists should do more to make sure that data is not presented in a misleading way. They would not accept bad spelling and grammar but they accept bad maths without even knowing it.

Shocking.

[TrillianAstra]

Said cereal bar is not very nice as well, I think they'd make it 200% better by putting in less cereal bar but writing on the packet "have something nice instead".

[TequillaMockingBird]

Stealth, just on an species level, there are about 30,000 which possess legs vs. about 1.2 million that don't (counting only animal species) and the legless species are overwhelmingly more common. I would be surprised if the average was above 0.0000001.

[Fluter]

DH told me about an advert he'd seen for some flapjack type breakfast bar thing which proudly proclaimed it was now 200% better because they'd doubled the size of the packet by putting 2 bars in.

Sadly, we then spent quite a long time trying to work out whether their marketing department had some fiendish mathematical genius working for them, or they were just crap at maths. We concluded the latter, eventually. .

[Notanexcitingname]

actually, that's not the version I know, it doesn't get as many puns in

[Notanexcitingname]

the ultimate geeky maths joke

[GrimmaTheNome]

Why did the chicken cross the Mobius strip?

To get to the same side.

[MaryBS]

Love these jokes :o! Love this geeky joke also (the one at the top of the page, but there are other ones too):

LOL

[slug]

3 staticians go duck hunting. Sitting in their hide they wait, and wait for a flock of ducks to fly by. Finally, after hours a flock of ducks appear.

The first statician takes a shot. It goes 5 metres above a duck. Quickly the second statician takes a shot at the same bird. Teh shot goes 5 metres below the duck.

the third statician starts dancing with glee "We got it" he cries.



Q: What is non-orientable and lives in the ocean?
A: Möbius Dick...

Q: What is polite and works for the phone company?
A: A deferential operator...

[witchwithallthetrimmings]

Q what is the longest lasting drink?
A Infini - tea

[witchwithallthetrimmings]

There are three commonly used measures of central tendency;
the mean (this is what most statisticians understand by the average) this is the sum of all values divided by the population size. Only if the distribution is not skewed and the variable is continous will you have half the population above and half below.
the median - this is the value in the middle and yes in this one half will be above and half will be below
the mode; this is the most frequently occuring value

so with the number of legs example
the mean will may 1.9
the median will be 2 (more than half the population have 2 legs)
the mode will also be 2 (more people have 2 legs rather than one or zero)


In the special case of a variable that is normally distributed the mean, mode and median will all be the same

[GrimmaTheNome]

Here's one for the parenting boards:
Q: How does a mathematician induce good behavior in her children?
A: `I've told you n times, I've told you n+1 times...'

[AgonyBeetle]

F(x) walks into a bar.
The barman says, "I'm sorry sir, we don't serve functions."

[Horopu]

Did you hear about the constipated mathematician?

He worked it out with a pencil.

[inmysparetime]

While we're on mathematician jokes;

An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician were on a train, crossing the border into Scotland. They saw a black sheep in a nearby field.
The engineer said "I see all sheep in Scotland are black"
The physicist said "I see there is at least one sheep in Scotland which is black"
The mathematician said "Scotland contains at least one sheep, one side of which appears black"

It's geeky, but funny nonetheless

[WithManyTots]

Mr & Mrs Adder had been married for some time, but just didn't seem to be able to have children. They went to the Doctor to seek advice. The Doctor listened to their story, examined them and announced that he knew what they needed to do. "You need to buy a rustic wooden garden table and put it in your garden" The Adders looked quizzical, but with no better offer, off they set to buy a rustic wooden garden table.

Only days later, Mrs Adder became pregnant. Mr & Mrs Adder were astounded, and returned to the Doctor, to thank him, and ask him how it had happened. "Oh, it has obvious", he said, " I worked out that adders can only multiply with the help of log tables"

[Tianc]

The mathmo. The other two smirked uneasily.

Maybe it's just the way I tell 'em...

[prism]

Can I be Humphrey Bogart, Tianc? I have the mac. I have to ask you, if I may- which one laughed?

[StealthPolarBear]

lol

[ObviouslyOblivious]

When VAT went to 20%, our work canteen raised prices by 20% and blamed the VAT increase!

[StealthPolarBear]

oh yes i had forgotten about that.
Really wish I could figure it out - suppose I need percentages for each species and then work it from there. Insects are the most prevalent group but they're just a single group. Might look into it - watch this space
urgh...if insects have 6 legs by definition, what are centipedes, other than creepy?

[theyoungvisiter]

oh sorry Stealth. I was meaning humans with the leg thing

I think if you included every creature on earth it would probably be incredibly low actually, because of the number of fish and single-celled organisms without any legs at all.

[theyoungvisiter]

Blimey, no I just checked my figures on the driving thing - it was 70% in Sweden but in the US an astonishing 93% of drivers consider themselves to be better than average!!

Just goes to show - there are a lot of people with inflated ideas out there. Not me, naturally. I have above average self-perception

[StealthPolarBear]

"The mean average number of legs is about 1.999 or something. That is definitely not the "normal" number."

Depends who you're including. If you include every creature on earth I wonder what it would be? Surely around 6.