Examples of Information in Different Formats We Have No Problem Assimilating.

[Norman]

The hardest part of this was finding a title which I am still not happy
with and the subject falls across categories from things we perceive
differently to plain straight units conversion.
It is amazing what you think of when you are lying in bed awake at
night.
It occurred to me that twelve hour and twenty four hour digital clocks
present the time differently in the hour after midnight. For example a
quarter past midnight is presented as 0:15 by a 24h clock which is
referenced to the present day whereas a twelve hour clock shows the
same time as 12:15 which is referenced to the previous day.
Personally I have no problem with digital clocks but prefer an analogue
watch because I think the hour hand gives a subconscious pictogram of
how the day is divided out. Funnily enough the other day somebody who
was looking at the timetable in the bus stop asked me the time and I
looked at my analogue watch and said something like "It is 14:17"
because he could immediately assimilate that to the timetable format.

Ask somebody from England about a cricket score and they might say
"It is 105 for 3"; an Australian on the other hand would tell you
"It is 3 for 105" For the Englander the build of the score is the
most important thing and the wickets in reserve are of secondary
importance whereas the Australian would perceive it the other way
round. The fallen wickets are of primary importance and the runs are
secondary.

Beaufort's wind scale is another thing. Nowadays if we want to know
how windy it is outside the information is usually quoted as a speed in
mph. Beaufort's scale is still around especially in the shipping
forecasts although this is a force and not a speed. It is strange how
this came to be integrated into common acceptance since Beaufort was an
admiral of the fleet and simply wanted a quick reference between wind
direction and force in order to set the sail configuration to bring a
line of men-o-war into battle formation.

Examples of straight units conversion would be things like quoting the
air temperature in °F; °C or for the scientifically minded °K.
Fuel economy for cars could be quoted in mpg or kpl. This is not what I
really had in mind though, it is more where the information is
presented or perceived differently. Like this nonsense of UK retailers
being forced to sell their goods in metric units with the result that
butchers have stickers in their meat saying £x/ 454g and the
difficulty I had in buying a kilo of meat when they really wanted to
sell me 908g.

Money is my final example for now. Not €/ £/$ conversions but the
way people perceive prices. Over here people think of small items in
Euros. A loaf of bread from the baker will cost about €1.80 but a
certain house may cost ten million franks.
This will change over the next generation but I think these are all
curious anomalies.

Do you have any comments or more examples?

[Jerry]

Yes, I understand exactly where you are coming from.

A young(ish) engineer I know has no idea of feet and inches, yet he
knows exactly what 'a thou' means.

I have to squint to get an intuitive feeling for centimetres and metres
(kilometres are a nightmare), yet I am perfectly happy using
millimetres when laying out an A4 form.

There was something similar in France a long time ago, when 1 NF = 100
Ancien Francs and one had both used side by side.

In France now, I look at the price in Francs and divide by 10 - much
easier than messing with .67

In the older days I would take, say, a PTS 1000 note and say 'that is a
Fiver - and should buy about a Tenner's worth of goods'

Curiously also one can ask for un Livre of fruit, or ein Pfund in
Germany and get 500gms.

On balance I don't mind metrification because it really does hang
together rather elegantly, but I object to jobsworths prosecuting
greengrocers for using measurements that their clients understand.

The old Imperial measurements are somehow better for 'physical'
measurements, while the metric ones are better for abstract stuff.

I vaguely remember hearing fairly recently, that the Beaufort scale
directly translated into sail settings for a ship - so it was more like
Code Green, Code Amber, Code Red than a rigid physical measurement.

[Drew]

As bitched previously, it completely hacks me off that the little
incident with twin towers (New York, not Lord of the Rings) is referred
to as 9/11. Simplistically, that's axiomatic of the reasons for the
obscene act. Personally I always call it 11/9. And those Yanks also
think that a 'mil' is a thousandth of an inch.

Think I experience less trouble with formats than most -- pictures.
Little tricks too for things like angstroms to nanometres, or pico /
nano / micro farads and henries, or ohms / kilohms / megohms / gigohms.
All done with mirrors. OK, all metric, but it's the same problem of
conceptualisation. Centigrade and Fahrenheit is eased by -40 being
identical in both. Kilometres to miles simply divide by two and add a
bit. Driving in France I always wondered why the speed advice warnings
on corners are in mph.

Where I do have problems is remembering if A3 is bigger or smaller than
A4. Knitting needles and wood screw gauge too. Thankfully for the
latter, millimetres is taking over. But my problems are nought compared
with yer average printer driver which gets it's knickers completely
in a fankle over paper sizes. Then if I get drawing files opened on
non-native programs (bleedin dxf especially), got to be mega careful
that (say) a 2:1 drawing doesn't re-dimension to twice size without
telling me.

There is a unit of atomic measurement called the 'barn', so named
because for a high speed particle it's like hitting a barn door and
the need for a unit of one tenth the size gave rise to the 'shed'.
Physicists eh, chucks.
In the early days of lasers, before things got quantatively
standardised, the 'Gillette' was a useful qualitative term --
referring to how many razor blades the pulsed beam could punch through.

I think to a large extent, problems with format comparison are largely
a sub-set of what any of the unit actually mean. Like what's a
'bar'? One atmosphere obviously, but how does that relate to water
pressure and if one could grasp that, could one then grasp a feeling
for a bar? Near enough one bar per 10 meters of course, which ties
other things together quite nicely.
Wavelength versus frequency. Some disciplines are happy in one but not
the other. Life's little coincidences that speed of light is pretty
damned close to 300,000km per sec therefore 1MHz has a wavelength of
300 meters or a period of 1 microsecond.

So I guess in answer to the query, it all depends upon education and
usage. Legacy leaves us with 2.54mm for 0.1 inch but it becomes second
nature and 40 thou per mil is often close enough. Two pi radians in 360
degrees is no problem if you understand the concept. It matters little
what the units are and sometimes radians are more appropriate than
degrees but the majority of people wander through life without knowing
even the basics like 90 degrees is a right angle and -90 degrees is a
left angle. From this one can infer that the bureaucrats in the EEC
(intellectual powers measured in the unit of 'dick head') have
little grasp of... well anything. Standardisation is very useful and
Yanks would do well to get in sync with the rest of the world,
especially in magnetic units. Nevertheless, a pound of sausages is a
hell of a lot more satisfying than the faceless metric equivalent. So
yes Norman, I thoroughly agree that imperial measurements are more
suited to the physical, and metric to abstract. Interesting that metric
British currency never acquired nicknames like the old imperials, or
indeed the US coins. Funny that.

'Time is relative' is a great escape route one of time zone
confusions

Best

[Jerry]

Interesting that a bottle of wine is generally 0.7 litres, which is
spitting distance of a pint.

Another one that fascinates me is that a mile is supposed to be 1000
strides of a Roman soldier, although that might be 1000 right foot
strides ...

Sadly someone beat me to it, writing a sarky letter stating that UK
voltage is actually 230v

That 240v misconception is a sign of the times ...

[Norman]

Yes it is hard to visualise the units sometimes; these thous are so
small there must be millions of them in an inch. I think we all have
rough conversion factors in our head; 40 thou = 1mm; BF1000 = £17and,
but £20 is good enough. The one I could never ever get into my head
was Italian Lira. One time I wanted to buy a trinket to bring home and
I asked my mate, who happened to be an ex banker and was good at these
things, how much it was. He said "A fiver" which was ok for me. The
next morning I woke up sitting bolt upright in bed thinking I paid £67
for that thing, so I went banging on his door shouting "You B*****d,
you let me pay £67 for that stupid thing. He said "No you didn't
you paid £4.85 now go back to bed"
Our old mate Phil asked a question on GA some time ago about gallons
and was told there were at least three maybe four, the US; the
Imperial; the Ale Gallon and I think there was also one based on a
fraction of a barrel of oil. Confusing or what!

Going back to whether 9/11 should be 11/9 (it is only the Yanks who
could think of a system where you go from middle sized units to the
smallest units and then to biggest. I once shared an office with a guy
who had an Air Force rank only because he coached the cadets in his
spare time. He told a story of a NATO exercise scheduled for the 6th
July and the Americans flew the squadron in on the 7th June. Everybody
said "What are you doing here"?
I guess shorthand can sometimes be a costly business.

I also guess that speed limits off the French Ferries are in mph just
in case the Brits think the top limit is 120 mph. They also have a cute
trick of starting you off driving on the left then introducing another
lane on the LHS and running out the one on the RHS so that you are
launched into the system in the good way.

If I were you though, I wouldn't bother starting a conversation about
knitting needle sizes around Rutherglen but the even more confusing
wire gauge sizes is OK to mention.

So your drawings sometimes take it on themselves to re-size without any
external intervention and I was mocked because I didn't want to write
Format C properly.

I used to remember that a micron is a millionth of a metre and an
angstrom is a trillionth of a metre.
Billions are another one though, a hundred million or a thousand
million, who is to say? Over here 10^9 is called a milliard which gets
around it quite nicely. All I know is that John Paul Getty once said
if you can count your money you haven't got a billion so I guess that
is most of us sorted out.

Best

[Drew]

Nice stories :-)

There are two questions which crop up with horrible regularity on quiz
shows or mini-quizzes for phone-ins. These are "What are the three
primary colours?" and "What is the unit of sound measurement?"
The required answers are unerringly wrong. Additive, red, green, blue;
subtractive, yellow cyan, magenta. For sound they want 'decibel'
(but the unit is the 'bel'), however, without qualification it
still ain't a measurement of sound. Much of the time I work in dBs
but I'm not measuring sound.

Best

[Jerry]

At least our outrage was on 7/7 - nice and unambiguous
- how thoughtful of them

I picked up from that GA question that there are 42 'Gallons' in a
barrel of oil, but I've no idea of the actual type of 'Gallon'
- 42 is easy to remember

Drew, both of those are news to me.
Especially the colours - they sound like light reversals

[Norman]

I believe those colours are good for reflected light but Red Blue and
Yellow are supposed to be the primary colours for transmitted light,
i.e. Kodacolour slides or church windows etc. I don't however want
to get drawn into a discussion defending this.

Right on with the Bel though albeit not a very practical unit. I guess
on a scope it would just transmit it as wave amplitude. I have never
considered before how a scope deals with sound wavelength, frequency
and amplitude before since sound waves are different in nature to most
other forms of electromagnetic waves. Anyway someone must have sorted
it out so there is no need for me to think on it further.
What a cop out!

Best.

[Norman]

Hi Jerry,

I guess being in your game you have never had to refill your own
printer cartridges.

Best

[Drew]

Well at the risk of being exceedingly tiresome, I'll explain primary
colours, albeit that quirks in the eye allow almost complete colour
rendition from only three colours.

Additive. Like a crt with three phosphors, red green and blue (aka
RGB), or rainbows. The colours aren't particularly narrow spectrum
but the eye doesn't bother 'cos the receptors are quite broad
frequency too. In fact, you'll see little difference compared with
combining monochromatic laser light. Point being that additive applies
when different colours are added together from a light source.
Therefore a (weighted) combination of the three colours produces white.

Subtractive. Paints, dyes etc, magenta, yellow and cyan. Again the
colours don't need to be particularly narrow for good rendition. Each
colour actually removes part of the wavelength so yellow pigment will
absorb frequencies lower and higher, ie magenta and cyan. Combine all
three (again weighted) and you'll get black.

Coloured glass, say red, absorbs all higher frequencies. So it is
subtractive in function but renders additive colour. It may or not be
self evident that the three additive and three subtractive primary
colours cannot be the same because they are complementary. Additively
what is commonly referred to as red is actually magenta, and blue is
cyan.

Interesting recent research claims that wumin have an extra colour
receptor, which might explain a lot!

------------------------

Is a ten gallon hat bigger in Britain than US?

Slight slip of the pen there Norman, sound isn't an electromagnetic
wave. You ever heard of the phonon? A quantum of lattice vibrational
energy. The sun apparently is absolutely full of them, quantum sound.
But you can have electromagnetic waves at sound frequency. There's no
bottom limit. Submarine coms use 16kHz or less 'cos it needs to be
that low to penetrate water (don't tell Jan, Norman). Data rate is
mega slow so messages tend to consist tersely of "England
expects...."

Glad I'm not the only one who gets the hump with sound being
'measured' in dBs. It is though I confess slightly non-intuitive
displaying sound waves on a scope. Like a mouse, you either slip into
it seamlessly or it never connects properly. Digital scopes can often
display in dBs, which is even more non-intuitive but dead useful. A
single pole filter resolves a slope of 6dB per octave (near enough) or
20 dB per decade (obviously?), ie +/- 10x voltage or current. But just
to ensure absolute clarity, 10dBs is +/- 10x power.
What also really hacks me off about mis-usage of decibels is things
like when it is said that such and such (often an aircraft) has a sound
level of xdBs. Absolutely completely ferkin meaningless. Shove your
head inside the exhaust nozzle and the meter will go off the scale.
Personally I feel that 'inverse square law' should be taught in
kindergarten.

Best

[Jerry]

I have never refilled my own cartridges
- once I got a colour printer but it was used so infrequently that it
dried up
- and landed up at the local tip

I've never had a yen for producing fake letter headings ... they look
so fake ... there are photocopy shops all over the place that have
single colour printing, and with a bit of quality control one can get
something that stands up to pretty close inspection.

Drew, I think that your 'subtractive colours' are somehow related to
complimentary colours, as demonstrated in the 2001 film. My knowledge
there is a bit rusty, but it is slightly related to this little
anecdote.

One day my father came back home looking rather worried, it turned out
that some UK professor had come up with a mathematical model for
predicting stress in glass bottles.

Delving into my memory, I remembered seeing a demonstration of shining
polarized light through glass and then a prism - and stress lines were
visibly obvious.

After explaining the phenomenon, my father visibly relaxed - and that
was the end of the matter. Personally I was quite impressed that an
academic had found a way of 'Greenmailing' a fairly substantial
industry ... and even more pleased about kicking him off his perch.

Incidentally, glass recycling is rubbish, you get so many trace
elements that bottles explode on the shelves - glass bottle re-use
makes sense - as does turning it into breeze blocks, but it just ain't
no good for making new pressurized bottles.

I'm not too much on sound, although I suspect that part of the reason
why I dislike music is because I can hear more of the top and the
bottom of the range than normal.

I can follow the reasons for asymptotic scales, otherwise one would
need a huge display, but I've a nasty feeling that it is like comparing
inches and miles .. mostly when I see charts nowadays I have a good
squint at the axes before looking at the 'hypothetical' data.

Too much data faking goes on these days
.. I've long said that if people cannot understand a table, then they
should not be permitted to look at a histogram ... or even worse a pie
chart.

I feel better now.

[Norman]

It was the word 'other' that did it. Seemed like I was bundling
sound in with the other stuff where I was actually trying to single it
out.
The old standby visualisations are still reasonably good, ripples
caused by throwing a pebble in a pond for electromagnetic waves and
tapping one end of a stretched Slinky for sound. That was the reason
for the question you answered about displaying fundamentally different
things on a scope.

Best

[Drew]

Yes I appreciated the 'other' slip of the keyboard. Just keeping
you on your toes. On the same tack though, a VLF metal detector which I
was designing a few years back got mega screwed up at the same time
every night from what I presume were those sub transmissions. I thought
to complain......

I have a colour inkjet but use it so infrequently that jet de-gunking
takes half an hour and always results in a godamawful mess. Saw an add
recently with a blonde secretary performing an inkjet refill on her
computer desk. In your dreams.
My ancient OKI laser (LED actually) does me just fine apart from having
to strip it down once to de-static the drum. Now *that* was messy. Bet
you didn't know that some laser toner is ferromagnetic so it can be
internally transported by a moving magnet.
Lot to be said for old technology dot matrix. Slow and noisy but all
you ever have to do to them is lightly spray the ribbon with WD40 to
revitalise them.

Didn't realise that glass recycling was so ineffective. How
depressing. Even new bottle don't always stand up to my mither's
Elderflower champagne -- one night there was a hell of a bank from the
pantry.

Re charts, it is somewhat telling that the default chart in Excel is a
pie or a histogram or some other dumb PR type guff. Never use them
myself, surprise surprise.

>the 2001 film
Don't follow? But yes stress analysis by polarisation is a powerful
too, or at least used to be prior to finite element analysis. Dunno if
you've ever noticed but the effect can be observed on toughened glass
windscreens with polarising sunspecs. Maybe I should suggest to my
mither that she checks out her elderflower champagne bottles.

Best

[Jerry]

Schweppes had tremendous problems with non deposit bottles
spontaneously exploding on supermarket shelves, they finally tracked it
down to traces of aluminium in recycled glass.

I had not noticed the effect on windscreens, but I don't tend to wear
sunglasses.

In the film 2001 Space Odyssey there is quite a long sequence shot in
complimentary colours - it just happens that the (slightly unpleasant)
effect sticks in my memory.

It sounds to me as if your 'mither' needs to get hold of some old
fashioned beer bottles
- the waste of her brew must be very disturbing.

Those dot matrixes were very good, OKI were the best I ever encountered
they would keep going for ever, and were great for multi copy forms.
Interestingly they could charge quite a price premium.

[Norman]

I used to be so cool I wore sunglasses indoors.

[Drew]

Well that's nuttin. I'm so cool I wear shades at the computer.

Ah yes, the trippy sequence in 2001. I'd not thought about reversed
colours, but now playing it back in my head I think you are right. What
I remember most was a lot of it was done with infra red film. Superb
film, but some people just don't get it.

The other point about dot matrix is that they are infinitely more
appropriate for developing countries (like Girvan). Still hanging onto
an A3 'cos you never know.

Rather than blowing up the bottles, occasionally the screw tops would
blow off. One can surmise that this would require several hundred psi.
But when they did blow, there wasn't the wet patch one might expect,
just absolutely everything in the pantry was covered in a fragrant
sticky film and an awful lot of little bits of glass. Bit scary. That
Schweppes story is salutary too.

Best

[Jerry]

I am short sighted - well in one eye - so I only wear glasses when
absolutely necessary
- and shades make me virtually blind
- they also make me look rather intimidating ...

I've also got a wide bed Epson stashed in the lockup, one never knows
when old technology will be needed again ...

Once looking inside a slightly customized dot matrix, we found that
there was an EPROM locked down with cable ties ...

It sounds as if your 'mither' needs to look into different types of
bottles, I can imagine the fountain that a burst screw top makes -
reminds me of a scientific experiment I once did with a can of lager on
a barbeque.

[Drew]

>they also make me look rather intimidating

I think you've missed the point of why most people wear shades :-)

EPROM and cable ties. Mmmm. You may remember how bad some DIL sockets
were 25 years ago. Chips just dropped out! Personally I *always* use
turned pin types. Bit more expensive but not in the long run.

Hope it was Tenants lager you wasted. Muck, ain't it.

Best

[Jerry]

Heh, I have happy memories of the Apple II in about 1980

Every so often they would misbehave, the solution was to rip them open
and firmly push all the chips back into place - one would hear the odd
satisfying crunch - a good indicator of success.

I don't see much Tenants in this neck of the woods, can't say I miss
it.
- and one of the really good things about the EU was supposed to be
properly brewed and cheap German beer.

[Drew]

Oh yes, cheap German beer in UK. Just one slight flaw, Brits are pig
iggorant when it comes to booze. We're not the only guilty ones
though; I've introduced Cheddar (and other Brit) cheeses to the
French and they are amazed. Nor, as they are surprised to find out, do
they have the monopoly on stinky cheeses.

Norman should be an expert on Tenants lager, being a non-organic
chemist.

Best

[Norman]

I think Tenants add said it all. You probably don't remember, it was a
few years ago now. This cartoon Sam Spade character was drinking with
a dioll in a bar when she was abducted by the Mafia. He was supposed to
finish his Tenants lager, sort out the Mafia and rescue the girl but
after drinking the lager he leaned on the bar and the voice over said
"Tenants lager, it's good but not that good".

Ever heard of Lion Brand beers? How they even got a toe hold is a
complete mystery.

Best

[Drew]

Nope, never saw the Lion beer. My ad filter probably clicked in. Hey,
seen the new Guinness ad? Good enough for me to have another sip just
in case I finally ever get to like the stuff.

Cannae whak the Irn-Bru ads though. "Made frae girders."

Best

[Norman]

I don't think Lion ever made enough money to afford an add man. Good
job though, it might have prolifferated. I only ever found it in about
three pubs in the Southport area. Like Nukie Brown, it came in clear
bottles as memory serves and tasted worse than water.

Don't get the Irn Bru adds here I'm afraid.

Best

[Jerry]

Actually it is spelt 'Tennents'

It is horrible - the 'Super' is 9% and tastes like watered down Serbian
Schliovic

Sadly, my local off licence is going through a bit of corporate idiocy
- quite interesting, an asset stripper bought Unwins
- what he did not understand is that they run like residential Pubs

I would not write a life insurance policy for someone who kicked out
400 ex-mil pub tenants.

[Drew]

Wasn't sure of the spelling and frankly my dear I didn't give a
damn, but neither apparently did my spell check because it suggested
'effluent', honest. Which reminds me of my favourite wheeze,
mentioned before but worth repeating. Sabotage certain words in Word
autocorrect so that 'Tennants' rewrites as 'that chemical muck,
Tennants' etc. Most people are too computer dumb to know how to
manipulate such things. Now if I can just access to the church's
computer........

Perhaps apocryphal, but I am assured there is a rather large ward in a
Newcastle hospital devoted exclusively to Nukie Brown drinkers.
Doesn't make you a bad person though, not that one can say as much
for The Tennants drinker. Indeed not healthy to cross them.

It is unfortunate that some small corners of the world have not yet
become sufficiently socially elevated to admit Irn Bru into their
sphere. One day we shall all be as sophisticated as the Scots. Ain't
no hangover cure like Irn Bru. Curious that this hasn't been focussed
on in the ads.

Best

[Jerry]

I can certainly vouch for Tennents ability to generate a hangover
- one that lasts for days and needs continual topping up

Never tried Irn Bru
- it sounds interesting

[Drew]

To be honest, Irn Bru is not exactly, erm, subtle. You either have to
be sugar craving young or seriously depleted of glucose and essential
electrolytes -- as in suffering the effects of ratarsing. Stuff is
absolutely laced with caffeine, addictively so apparently. An excellent
cure, if not indeed a substitute, for Tennants.

Best

[Jerry]

Hmm... I think I had better give both a miss in the future