[geeks] Why? i.e. why do people have such poor math & engineering skills?

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Wednesday, July 31, 2002 at 10:50:33 (-0700), Fogg, James wrote: ]
> Subject: RE: [geeks] Why? i.e. why do people have such poor math &   enginee ring skills?
>
> The reply was SO pedantic, however, that I was stunned beyond response.

Hmmm.... interesting -- even with qualifiers plainly inserted people
will misread what I write.

One more try:

My post was not about your mistake in particular, and I certainly didn't
want to, and still do not want to, even begin to try to analyze why you
just picked such a wildly incorrect number out of the air.  I only used
your guess in my example of how to validate the answer because it is
likely one heck of a lot more meaningful to most folks here than the
cannon barrel on the Princeton campus (of which I've only seen photos
and can barely remember the rough measurements for).

However I did think it made a good jumping point to start off a
discussion of the more general issue.  After all I'm obviously not the
only person who will on occasion make wildly wrong assumptions about
matters of the physical world.


> I was highly suspicious that it was flamewar bait,

not at all....

> as I suspect that such
> grand pedantism (is that a word?) is rare in humans.

Maybe in general, but this is _the_ "geeks" mailing list.....

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

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