[Nigredo]

University Challenge does usually seem to show “a certain type” of maths student as well.

[Bones McCoy]

It's definitely got its roots in public schools, where no boy expected to actually work for a living, so science lessons were basically about blowing shit up and making smelly concoctions.

That, I think, is the key to a lot of this thinking. Jobs worthy of a gentleman, or ones to aspire to, were about communication: law, politics, church, management, journalism. So while if you work in a practical job you pretty much need some maths or applied science (e.g. mechanics), at a higher level it's enough to get others to make things work, rather than know how they work. Throw in a bit of aspirational snobbery too.

I recall an incident during the Cameron government.
Weekend at Chequers, a breaker tripped and nobody present knew what to do.
They faffed about trying to find a security cleared electrician to send, meaning David was Camera-off for something like four hours.

I was amazed that nobody (even the Met's protection personnel) knew how to reset an RCD breaker.
The journalists/announcers reporting the story weren't amazed through.
There was at least one "Fortunately we have our engineers here in the studio".

There wasn't a single one of the press corps enquiring about the PM's safety or national security.


Still: Latin and rowing, they're good, eh!

[Bones McCoy]

Did CP Snow die in vain?

[Boiler]

I recall an incident during the Cameron government.
Weekend at Chequers, a breaker tripped and nobody present knew what to do.
They faffed about trying to find a security cleared electrician to send, meaning David was Camera-off for something like four hours.
I was amazed that nobody (even the Met's protection personnel) knew how to reset an RCD breaker.

Knowing how to reset an RCD is easy.

It's what you need to do when it keeps tripping...

[kreuzberger]

This maths thing, I was actually going to post earlier about it, having heard the wall to wall bewilderment which was the Today program this morning. Utterly clueless.

Some background. I got a B grade at O-level in maths and frankly, that should have brought about a bout of imposter syndrome. I was lucky that trigonometry featured so prominently on the paper that year.

Fast forward some seven years to when I got my first proper job, numeracy was mandatory and I scraped in through the skin of my teeth.

That was August 1985. By September 1985, I had realised how much I didn't know and had set about learning the basics. As the chill winds of October began to blow, I was able to tie half of Fleet Street in knots and to exploit the utter stupidity of those who worked there and who had largely benefited from a far better education than I had.

Plus ça change.

[Bones McCoy]

I recall an incident during the Cameron government.
Weekend at Chequers, a breaker tripped and nobody present knew what to do.
They faffed about trying to find a security cleared electrician to send, meaning David was Camera-off for something like four hours.
I was amazed that nobody (even the Met's protection personnel) knew how to reset an RCD breaker.

Knowing how to reset an RCD is easy.

It's what you need to do when it keeps tripping...

Of course the reports failed to mention that sort of detail.

Memories of Private Eye's "Pissed old hack bewildered by modern technology" column.

[MisterMuncher]

See also: t-shirts bearing the slogan "stand back, I'm going to try science".

Tis a thing from XKCD, the t-shirt is derived/evolved from this cartoon.

https://xkcd.com/208/

[Andy McDandy]

And Randall Munroe is in fairness an excellent scientific communicator. We need more like him.

[Nigredo]

Was discussing Omicron with my mathematician friend last night and he said the British government should be using the metaphor of “If you switch from drinking 6 pints to 12 half pints, the result is very much the same”.

[Bones McCoy]

It doesn't help when the media portray fairly simple statistics in particularly obfuscated ways.

Today "Boosted patients are between 40% and 70% less likely to require hospital treatment".

It's the numeric equivalent of a double negative.
Only an evil marketing guy selling cat food would mangle figures like that.
(Or somebody without much concept of what the numbers mean).

See earlier medical stories: Gobshites claiming 0.002% fatalities going unchallenged.

We have a massive deficit of numerate journalists.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Drives me up the wall.

My maths was crap until I had to shape up to do the stats part of my Master's. But this is either, as you say, obfuscation, or simply a lack of understanding on the part of a journalist. Meaningless and does nothing to develop understanding.

[Boiler]

It all seems so far away from how I used to occupy my mind with mathematical puzzles in my youth, and even now: e.g. "what's the difference in surface area of two 8" loudspeaker cones versus one 12" loudspeaker cone?", never mind doing numerous Ohm's Law calculations for transistor bias in my head.

I breezed through O-level maths and sat there twiddling my thumbs during the exam: A-level I did badly at but when I went into training, I was taught calculus differently and suddenly it was like a light bulb going on in my head. Bessel functions*? Doddle.

Probably not now though, 40 years on.

*Bessel functions are used in calculating modulation indices in frequency modulation; a popular exercise was to calculate what mod index led to the carrier being completely suppressed and all the signal existing solely in the sidebands.

[Boiler]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... stmas.html

With cases on the rise and the Omicron strain spreading rapidly, families and friends have already taken to social media to accuse loved ones of giving them Covid, forcing them into isolation ahead of the festive holidays.

And while some have kept the finger-pointing light-hearted, others have accused friends, house-mates and family members of 'ruining' their Christmas.

The highest-rated comments beggar belief; for example

Screenshot 2021-12-24 at 12-10-43 Covid blame game Brits point finger at loved ones over positive tests.png (4.41 KiB) Viewed 1909 times

Screenshot 2021-12-24 at 12-11-15 Covid blame game Brits point finger at loved ones over positive tests.png (4.06 KiB) Viewed 1909 times

Screenshot 2021-12-24 at 12-11-59 Covid blame game Brits point finger at loved ones over positive tests.png (5.62 KiB) Viewed 1909 times

And this from a forum for anxiety sufferers:

What sort of “safe and effective” vaccine needs to be injected four times in a single calendar year in order to not prevent people from being infected with the disease being “prevented”? If, at this point, you submit to a FOURTH injection, you’re officially retarded.

[satnav]

Three of my colleagues from school have all posted on Facebook today to say that they have tested positive for Covid. They all had negative tests on Monday morning but keeping schools open until Wednesday has helped to ensure these three members of staff are going to have fairly miserable Christmas's. When 'The Sun' reported todays fires they used the word 'unlucky' to describe the 122,000 people who had positive test results. Where are earth does luck come into this? If schools had all closed last Friday I think the numbers would be lower and at least anyone who was positive last Friday would have had 7 days to shake off the virus and get a couple of negative tests before Christmas Day.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

At son's workplace, 50% infected. All work stopped, cash flow halted. No support.
At his partner's workplace 5 out of 9 (55%)

[Boiler]

An interview with Professor Sir John Bell, who is always worth a listen: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0012r7g

From 08:30 in. Interestingly, he thinks a fourth dose is unnecessary - and admits he's isolating with Omicron at the moment.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Reports that Prof Whitty is to be knighted in the New Year's Honours list.

Well deserved?

[Boiler]

Reports that Prof Whitty is to be knighted in the New Year's Honours list.

Well deserved?

Well, it'll certainly wind the Mail up.

[mattomac]

And some of the more idiotic Tories

[Boiler]

And some of the more idiotic Tories

I gather the CRG and its hangers-on are making noises about any further Covid-related restrictions.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... year-rules

However, Tory MPs are hardening their attitudes against further restrictions and now want cabinet ministers to be vocal in their opposition. “If No 10 proposes tighter restrictions straight after Christmas, those cabinet ministers with freedom-loving instincts – who gave us all so much hope last week – must speak out,” said one member of the Covid Recovery Group of Tory MPs. “In any future leadership contest, we will all remember how they acted this week. We need real, gutsy, freedom-loving Conservatives to rescue us from this madness.”

The CRG - or Cunt Recognition Group as I prefer to call them.