Re: The Place Holder
Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 4:10 am
What is the three-space volume of the set of all infinitely nested sets of all sets of four-space singularities which contain themselves as members?
Perhaps in contrast with some of the Archive young-uns members, I was born while the world could reasonably be thought to make some sort of usefully intelligible sense. So much sense, in fact, that a slide rule was adequate for most engineering and science calculations; with things like a Victor Comptometer or a Monroe IQ213 mechanical calculator when three "sig figs" were not enough.
I remain decently proficient in slip-stick. Having reached into the center drawer of the desk at which I am computer keystroking, I got out my Dietzgen Microglide (TM) Vector Type Log Log slide rule, Dietzgen catalog number N1725.
That slide rule has the following list of scales: LL01, LL02, LL03, DF, CF, L, CI, C, D, LL3, LL2, LL1, and, on the flip side, Th, Sh2, Sh1, A, B, T<45 degrees, T>45 degrees, ST, S, another D, DI, and K.
If one allows that subtracting a positive number is equivalent to adding a negative number, all a slide rule actually does is to add one-dimensional distances. What the distances mean is a property of the markings (or rulings) of the various scales. Glancing at the L and D scales, it is obvious to me that the log base 10 of 1.00 is 0.000 plus or minus 0.0025, the log base 10 of 2 is 0.301 plus or minus 0.0025 and I could, were I so to choose, do more slip-stick number crunching.
What seems to have been set aside during the recent reign of digital calculators and digital computers is a clear sense of the significance of measurement accuracy.
For those who have Windows XP up and running, it may yet be possible to find Microsoft Power Toys for Windows XP. PowerToyCalc, which is one of the toys, can do something like 512 digit calculations, which is identified in that program as "Extreme Precision and is identified as "very slow" and so I fired up a Winows XP Pro system with PowerToyCalc and decided to demonstrate that doing an ~500 digit calculation of the approximation of Pi which is 355 divided by 113 is an absurd calculation, as only the first 7 digits (3.141592) are significant..
So, if I decide to find the value of Pi (the ratio of circumference to diameter of a plane circle), using PowerToyCalc and Extreme Precision, by dividing 355 by 113, using "copy and paste," I end up with:
355 113 /
3.141592920353982300884955752212389380530973451327 43362831858407079646017699115044247787610619469026 54867256637168141592920353982300884955752212389380 53097345132743362831858407079646017699115044247787 61061946902654867256637168141592920353982300884955 75221238938053097345132743362831858407079646017699 11504424778761061946902654867256637168141592920353 98230088495575221238938053097345132743362831858407 07964601769911504424778761061946902654867256637168 14159292035398230088495575221238938053097345132743 3628318584071
In my view, none of those zeroes are place holders because none of them are significant digits, and none of them are numbers in terms of the actual value of Pi because they are not significant.
Has this posting already gone down the bit bucket overflow drain? Or down the binit bucket overflow drain? How many bits can a binit bucket hold before it overflows?
Did they learn me right when I was an engineering student; a binit may hold any number of bits? If so, does not the zero binit have infinite capacity?
Please do not zero out my Archive participation because I may have zero understanding of zero and have zero awareness of that.
Then there is that book by Susan Sheehan, "Is There No Place on Earth for Me." I do have some sort of slight sense of identification with Sylvia Frumkin.
Will I ever need a place holder with the Archive, the better to be not completely zeroed out because I am out?
Please pretend I never asked, unless necessary.
Is that why Zero, in Beetle Bailey, seems to me to be the smartest of all that comic strip's characters? More than anyone else, Zero gets that no one, including himself, gets it.
Perhaps in contrast with some of the Archive young-uns members, I was born while the world could reasonably be thought to make some sort of usefully intelligible sense. So much sense, in fact, that a slide rule was adequate for most engineering and science calculations; with things like a Victor Comptometer or a Monroe IQ213 mechanical calculator when three "sig figs" were not enough.
I remain decently proficient in slip-stick. Having reached into the center drawer of the desk at which I am computer keystroking, I got out my Dietzgen Microglide (TM) Vector Type Log Log slide rule, Dietzgen catalog number N1725.
That slide rule has the following list of scales: LL01, LL02, LL03, DF, CF, L, CI, C, D, LL3, LL2, LL1, and, on the flip side, Th, Sh2, Sh1, A, B, T<45 degrees, T>45 degrees, ST, S, another D, DI, and K.
If one allows that subtracting a positive number is equivalent to adding a negative number, all a slide rule actually does is to add one-dimensional distances. What the distances mean is a property of the markings (or rulings) of the various scales. Glancing at the L and D scales, it is obvious to me that the log base 10 of 1.00 is 0.000 plus or minus 0.0025, the log base 10 of 2 is 0.301 plus or minus 0.0025 and I could, were I so to choose, do more slip-stick number crunching.
What seems to have been set aside during the recent reign of digital calculators and digital computers is a clear sense of the significance of measurement accuracy.
For those who have Windows XP up and running, it may yet be possible to find Microsoft Power Toys for Windows XP. PowerToyCalc, which is one of the toys, can do something like 512 digit calculations, which is identified in that program as "Extreme Precision and is identified as "very slow" and so I fired up a Winows XP Pro system with PowerToyCalc and decided to demonstrate that doing an ~500 digit calculation of the approximation of Pi which is 355 divided by 113 is an absurd calculation, as only the first 7 digits (3.141592) are significant..
So, if I decide to find the value of Pi (the ratio of circumference to diameter of a plane circle), using PowerToyCalc and Extreme Precision, by dividing 355 by 113, using "copy and paste," I end up with:
355 113 /
3.141592920353982300884955752212389380530973451327 43362831858407079646017699115044247787610619469026 54867256637168141592920353982300884955752212389380 53097345132743362831858407079646017699115044247787 61061946902654867256637168141592920353982300884955 75221238938053097345132743362831858407079646017699 11504424778761061946902654867256637168141592920353 98230088495575221238938053097345132743362831858407 07964601769911504424778761061946902654867256637168 14159292035398230088495575221238938053097345132743 3628318584071
In my view, none of those zeroes are place holders because none of them are significant digits, and none of them are numbers in terms of the actual value of Pi because they are not significant.
Has this posting already gone down the bit bucket overflow drain? Or down the binit bucket overflow drain? How many bits can a binit bucket hold before it overflows?
Did they learn me right when I was an engineering student; a binit may hold any number of bits? If so, does not the zero binit have infinite capacity?
Please do not zero out my Archive participation because I may have zero understanding of zero and have zero awareness of that.
Then there is that book by Susan Sheehan, "Is There No Place on Earth for Me." I do have some sort of slight sense of identification with Sylvia Frumkin.
Will I ever need a place holder with the Archive, the better to be not completely zeroed out because I am out?
Please pretend I never asked, unless necessary.
Is that why Zero, in Beetle Bailey, seems to me to be the smartest of all that comic strip's characters? More than anyone else, Zero gets that no one, including himself, gets it.