X-Nico

unusual facts about calculating



0.999...

Joseph Mazur tells the tale of an otherwise brilliant calculus student of his who "challenged almost everything I said in class but never questioned his calculator," and who had come to believe that nine digits are all one needs to do mathematics, including calculating the square root of 23.

Alexander of Villedieu

The poem is not very long, only a few hundred lines, and summarizes the art of calculating with the new style of Indian dice, or Talibus Indorum, as he calls the new Hindu-Arabic numerals.

Base on balls

Though intentional walks are recorded as such in the records of the official scorer, they are combined with standard, non-intentional walks when calculating a player's on-base percentage, and have only received a separate column in a player's statistics since 1955.

Battenberg course indicator

The Battenberg course indicator is a mechanical calculating device invented by Prince Louis of Battenberg in 1892 for taking station on other vessels whose range & bearing and course & speed are known.

Belgrave Trust

; Ease Through Simplicity : An extreme concern with a very simple and fast method for calculating and individual's carbon footprint, contrasted with the sequential questionnaire approach, and transactional (rather than subscription) model used by first generation retail voluntary offset services such as TerraPass and Native Energy.

Bobby Deerfield

Formula One auto racer Bobby Deerfield is a calculating, control-obsessed loner who has become used to winning the checkered flag on the track.

Bruce Gilchrist

That same year, with a special interest in calculating methods for weather forecasting, and with funding arranged by the mathematician John von Neumann, he joined the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey supported on United States Smith-Mundt and Fulbright programs.

Dumaresq

The Dumaresq is a mechanical calculating device invented around 1902 by Lieutenant John Dumaresq of the Royal Navy.

Eric Gurney

He illustrated Punctured Poems (1971) by Richard Armour; How to Live with a Neurotic Dog (1960) (text by Stephen Baker); How to Live with a Calculating Cat (1962) (text by William Nettleton); an edition of Sportsmanlike Driving (1965), a textbook published by the American Automobile Association; and many other titles, whose total sales number in the millions.

Foulby

John Harrison (24 March 1693–24 March 1776) was an English carpenter and clock designer, who solved the problem of calculating longitude through the carrying of precise time on board ship, was born in this tiny village.

Gross leasable area

The Building Owners and Managers Association has established a standard with American National Standards Institute, ANSI/BOMA Z65.1-1996 for measuring floor area and calculating gross leasable area and loss factor.

Heinrich Bruns

For the study of astronomical refraction he developed an unusual method of calculating the vertical gradient of air temperature together with his Assistent Felix Hausdorff.

Henry Darcy

During this period he modified the Prony equation for calculating head loss due to friction, which after further modification by Julius Weisbach would become the well-known Darcy–Weisbach equation still in use today.

Herman Goldstine

He was commissioned a lieutenant and worked as an ordnance mathematician calculating firing tables at the Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL) at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland.

High Holy Days

The Mishnah, the core work of the Jewish Oral Torah, sets this day aside as the new year for calculating calendar years and Sabbatical and jubilee years.

Huber's equation

Very useful in calculating the span width of the bridges like Golden Gate Bridge or Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, their beam cross-sections, etc.

J. Doyne Farmer

During this time the group built a series of computers that were capable of calculating the motion of a moving ball, and trials in Las Vegas showed success.

Jean-Baptiste Waldner

The Manufacturing Resource Planning concept has evolved over the past 30 years from a simple means of calculating materials requirements and components (which does not even take into account the production capacity of the company) - to integrated ERP MRP concepts and software to automated management of the entire company.

Károly Szabó

1945–1949 owner of the "Universal" bureau equipment company with Plachy and Wagner representatives for Brunsviga (German), Precisa (Swiss), Odhner (Swedish) calculating machines in Hungary.

Logistic distribution

Both the United States Chess Federation and FIDE have switched their formulas for calculating chess ratings from the normal distribution to the logistic distribution; see Elo rating system.

Loss factor

The Building Owners and Managers Association has established a standard with American National Standards Institute, ANSI/BOMA Z65.1-2010 for measuring floor area and calculating gross leasable area and loss factor.

Martyn Poliakoff

He hit the news for calculating that the FIFA World Cup Trophy could not have been made from solid gold as it would be too heavy to raise aloft.

Neopaganism in the United Kingdom

A study conducted by Ronald Hutton compared a number of different sources (including membership lists of major organisations within the United Kingdom, major events attendance, subscriptions to magazines, etc.), and used standard models for calculating likely numbers of Pagans within the United Kingdom.

Osmotic pressure

Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff first proposed a formula for calculating the osmotic pressure, but this was later improved upon by Harmon Northrop Morse.

Paul de Casteljau

Other methods, such as Horner's method and forward differencing, are faster for calculating single points but are less robust.

Physical year

Fiscal year, used for calculating annual financial reports in businesses

Pinch technology

Pinch analysis is a methodology for minimising energy consumption of chemical processes by calculating minimum energy consumption and by optimising heat recovery systems etc.

PollyVote

In their IJF paper, the PollyVote team discusses several reasons why this might be the case: (1) people have difficulties to understand the benefits of combining, (2) people wrongly believe that they can identify the best forecast, and (3) people think that the method of calculating averages is too simple.

Protocol spoofing

Error correction and file transfer protocols typically work by calculating a checksum or CRC for a block of data known as a packet, and transmitting the resulting number at the end of the packet.

RF engineering

Phillip H. Smith, who developed a graphical method of calculating impedances, admittances, reflection coefficients and scattering parameters.

Rhonda Volmer

She has a humble, trustworthy demeanor, but she is actually very calculating and manipulative.

Scottish local elections, 2007

The notional results in the following table are based on a document that John Curtice and Stephen Herbert (Professors at the University of Strathclyde) produced on 3 June 2005, calculating the effect of the introduction of the Single Transferable Vote on the 2003 Scottish Local Elections.

Star Light

Ib Hoffman relates the story of how his son Benj, at the age of thirteen, designed and built SCUBA equipment, carefully calculating all the parameters, only to come close to dying on his first dive because he lacked a crucial piece of information about the physiology of breathing, one which all his knowledge of physics and engineering could not have predicted.

Stoke Fleming

George Parker Bidder, once known as "the Calculating Boy", is buried in its graveyard.

Substantial Presence Test

In calculating days of presence for the substantial presence test, a person can exclude a few calendar years present on a F visa, J visa, M visa, or Q visa (the number of calendar years varies based on the status).

Thomas Benger

On 5 June 1555 he had been examined by Secretary Bourne, the Master of the Rolls, Sir Francis Englefield, Sir Richard Read and Doctor Hughes, 'upon such points as they shall gather out of their former confessions, touching their lewd & vain practises of calculating or conjuring, presently sent unto the with the said letters.

Tistedalen Murders

Public prosecutor Lasse Qvigstad presented the accused as an ice cold and calculating man who murdered his defenceless victims, then taking his time to look for valuables in their homes.

Transport theory

Light transport theory, deals with the mathematics behind calculating the energy transfers between media that affect visibility

Trippet stones

Norman Lockyer visited the site in 1907 and suggested the date of the circle's construction to be around 1700 BC by calculating an alignment of Arcturus over Rough Tor.

Wallace John Eckert

Eckert arranged with IBM president Thomas J. Watson for a donation of newly developed IBM 601 calculating punch, which could multiply instead of just adding and subtracting.

Wallenstein Palace

Emperor Ferdinand II feared Albrecht of Wallenstein’s calculating mind and had him assassinated in 1634 in the town of Eger (now Cheb).


see also