Came across this today and thoroughly enjoyed this read:

http://www.ams.org/publicoutreach/feature-column/fcarc-stern-brocot

 

Ok so math IS useful. I always suspected .

 

My wife is an Engineer - I am not - I did Economics

Often when she wants to shut me down in an insulting way during an argument, she’ll simply look at me and say “... cuz MATH!”. I have not found an effective response and so I concede the point. <shrug>

 

So did I. Thank's a lot!
Any volunteers fetching their jigg saw building a perpetual calendar?

 

I thought economics was full of math!

 

Of course, but it’s not as intense or in-depth as Engineering math (per my darling wife).

During a third year Econ math course, my professor commented that “economics math is more difficult than engineering math. In engineering they set all unknowns to zero and in economics we have thousands of variables!” I thought this was quite funny and so I say it to my wife and father-in-law regularly (he’s a Civil Engineering Professor Emeritus UNO), all in jest.

Her “cuz math!” is like a simple snack-down version of QED, and it’s very effective.

 

I understood so little of that I think I've gone full retard.

 

Damn that’s an interesting article. I’ve always been curious about the calculations for movement train engineering.

But trying to read the article also embarrasses me. I’ve forgotten so much.

I went to M.I.T. in the mid 70’s, and the article is way over my head too. (Part of the problem is it’s been sooo long since I had to think that way. My career means I study people, not numbers.)

 

I had wished to build one of the totally wooden construction open wall cocks that are several feet wide with gears the size of trash can covers etc. These days I don't have enough open wall space for the project.

IIRC instead of springs they used a very long lever with a suspended weight and geared down transmission . Each day or week depending on sizes you'd raise the weight by hand to re-cock the mechanism.