History Interesting anecdotes in the history of physics?

[pinball1970]

In his book Ramanujan: Twelve Lectures on Subjects Suggested by His Life and Work, G. H. Hardy tells this famous story:

He could remember the idiosyncracies of numbers in an almost uncanny way. It was Littlewood who said every positive integer was one of Ramanujan’s personal friends. I remember once going to see him when he was lying ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi-cab No. 1729, and remarked that the number seemed to be rather a dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavourable omen. “No,” he replied, “it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.”

Namely,

103+93=1000+729=1729=1728+1=123+13


https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2022/02/hardy_ramanujan_and_taxicab_no.html

 

[pines-demon]

I never once thought this story was not true, why make up a story about Gauss being a mathematical genius?
He was a mathematical genius and was probably pretty good at 8!

The below article uses the word "apocryphal." Perhaps @fresh_42 knows?

https://www.theguardian.com/science...e-it-carl-friedrich-gauss-money-saving-expert

This a great anecdote, some parts of it are authentic. It was recorded by Sartorius who published Gauss' biography Gauss zum Gedächtnis after Gauss' passing. He writes:

In 1784 after his seventh birthday the little fellow entered the public school where elementary subjects were taught and which was then under a man named Büttner. It was a drab, low school-room with a worn, uneven floor.... Here among some hundred pupils Büttner went back and forth, in his hand the switch which was then accepted by everyone as the final argument of the teacher. As occasion warranted he used it. In this school—which seems to have followed very much the pattern of the Middle Ages—the young Gauss remained two years without special incident. By that time he had reached the arithmetic class in which most boys remained up to their fifteenth year.

Here occurred an incident which he often related in old age with amusement and relish. In this class the pupil who first finished his example in arithmetic was to place his slate in the middle of a large table. On top of this the second placed his slate and so on. The young Gauss had just entered the class when Büttner gave out for a problem [the summing of an arithmetic series]. The problem was barely stated before Gauss threw his slate on the table with the words (in the low Braunschweig dialect): "There it lies." While the other pupils continued [counting, multiplying and adding], Büttner, with conscious dignity, walked back and forth, occasionally throwing an ironical, pitying glance toward this the youngest of the pupils. The boy sat quietly with his task ended, as fully aware as he always was on finishing a task that the problem had been correctly solved and that there could be no other result.

At the end of the hour the slates were turned bottom up. That of the young Gauss with one solitary figure lay on top. When Büttner read out the answer, to the surprise of all present that of young Gauss was found to be correct, whereas many of the others were wrong.

No mention of 100. More analysis on what is or what is not true here: Gauss' day of reckoning (American Scientist)

 

[pines-demon]

Physicist Phil Abelson was working on what he thought were transuranium elements, working for Luis Alvarez. One day Alvarez rushes in with a weird haircut, tells Abelson to sit down and says:

Phil, what you are looking for are not transuranium elements, but they are elements in the middle of the periodic table!

Alvarez just had understood what fission was while he was in the hairdresser, in his words:

I remember exactly how I heard about it. I was sitting in the barber chair in Stevens Union having my hair cut, reading the Chronicle, and in the second section, buried away some place, was an announcement that some German chemists had found that the uranium atom split into pieces when it was bombarded with neutrons—that's all there was to it. So I remember telling the barber to stop cutting my hair and I got right out of the barber chair and ran as fast as I could up to the Radiation Laboratory.

This scene was partially depicted in the movie Oppenheimer (2023).

 

[pines-demon]

Quick one:

When the muon was discovered, Isaac Rabi said (1936):

Who ordered that?

Side note: Hideki Yukawa did predict a "mu particle" a year before, but it was not a lepton, which caused a bit of confusion for several years. Yukawa hadronic particle was found much later and was renamed the pion.

 

[pinball1970]

Plenty of stories about the brilliant, prolific and eccentric Paul Erdos, Hungarian Mathematician, I like this one.

"On one occasion, Erdős met a mathematician and asked him where he was
from. "Vancouver," the mathematician replied. "Oh, then you must know my
good friend Elliot Mendelson," Erdos said."

The reply was "I AM your good friend Elliot Mendelson."

 

[pinball1970]

Ernst Eduard Kummer (1810-1893), a German algebraist, was rather poor at
arithmetic. Whenever he had occasion to do simple arithmetic in class, he
would get his students to help him. Once he had to find 7 x 9. "Seven
times nine," he began, "Seven times nine is er -- ah --- ah -- seven times
nine is. . . ." "Sixty-one," a student suggested.
Kummer wrote 61 on the
board. "Sir," said another student, "it should be sixty-nine."
"Come,
come, gentlemen, it can't be both," Kummer exclaimed. "It must be one or
the other."

 

[pinball1970]

The maths ones are some of the best actually. Last one for today.

John von Neumann (1903-1957) [Hungarian/US mathematician and scientist] The
following problem can be solved either the easy way or the hard way.

Two trains 200 miles apart are moving toward each other; each one is going
at a speed of 50 miles per hour. A fly starting on the front of one of
them flies back and forth between them at a rate of 75 miles per hour. It
does this until the trains collide and crush the fly to death. What is the
total distance the fly has flown?

The fly actually hits each train an infinite number of times before it gets
crushed, and one could solve the problem the hard way with pencil and paper
by summing an infinite series of distances. The easy way is as follows:
Since the trains are 200 miles apart and each train is going 50 miles an
hour, it takes 2 hours for the trains to collide. Therefore the fly was
flying for two hours. Since the fly was flying at a rate of 75 miles per
hour, the fly must have flown 150 miles. That's all there is to it.

When this problem was posed to John von Neumann, he immediately replied,
"150 miles."

"It is very strange," said the poser, "but nearly everyone tries to sum the
infinite series."

"What do you mean, strange?" asked Von Neumann. "That's how I did it!"

It would be nice if all of these are accurate but I am sure the stories evolve over time like the Gauss 101 story.
The source of the last three is below which does give a few references.

https://jcdverha.home.xs4all.nl/scijokes/10.html

 

[pines-demon]

This is recorded by Louis Geoffroy:

Andrè-Marie Ampère was very absent minded.

Once while Ampère was giving a lecture in the French Academy of Sciences, a person entered the room, causing a lot of murmuration in the public. The "newcomer" was condecorated with the highest medals from the French Legion of Honor, and with a hand sign he stopped the murmuration in room and took sit in the first empty chair that he found. Ampère did not notice much, but after finishing his talk, he found that his chair was taken by the newcomer. Ampère tried to move around and cough to indicate the newcomer to stand up, but he did not flinch. Ampère angry, went to investigate who was this person.

In the same room, he said to famous French biologist Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (president of the Academy) :

— Mr President, I have to tell you that there is a stranger among us, occupying one of our seats (said Ampère)

– You are wrong sir. This person that you are alluding to is indeed a member of the Science Academy (said Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire)

– Since when? (questioned Ampère)

– Since the 5 Nivôse, year VI (answered the newcomer, using the French Republican calendar)

– Please, what is your section sir? (said Ampère with irony)

– Mechanics, my dear colleague (said the newcomer in joyful manner)

– That's a bit odd (said Ampère who was digging deep into the academy records)

Ampère had just found that at the date announced by the newcomer, the records listed the name "Napoléon Bonaparte". The newcomer was the Emperor. Bonaparte added:

You see, Sir, how inconvenient it is not to see one’s colleagues frequently. I never see you at the Tuileries, either, but I know how to force you to come, at least to say good-day to me!

Ampère apologized and went to find a new chair.

George Gamow adds in The great physicists from Galileo to Einstein, that after that exchange, Napoléon formally invited Ampère to dinner at the Palace of Fontainebleau the next day. Ampère accepted. But the next day, one seat in the palace was vacant, Ampère had forgotten that we has invited to dinner with the Emperor!

 

[pinball1970]

The OP is physics not maths my bad. Fun thread absolutely though.

 

[pines-demon]

I forgot yesterday was $\pi$ day. There is this famous story misattributed to Feynman (which is possibly originally from Douglas Hofstadter) where he humorously proposed memorizing the first 752 digits of $\pi$:

3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097494459230781640628620899862803482534211706798214808651328230664709384460955058223172535940812848111745028410270193852110555964462294895493038196442881097566593344612847564823378678316527120190914564856692346034861045432664821339360726024914127372458700660631558817488152092096282925409171536436789259036001133053054882046652138414695194151160943305727036575959195309218611738193261179310511854807446237996274956735188575272489122793818301194912983367336244065664308602139494639522473719070217986094370277053921717629317675238467481846766940513200056812714526356082778577134275778960917363717872146844090122495343014654958537105079227968925892354201995611212902196086403441815981362977477130996051870721134999...[9998372...]

so that one could end the counting with "and so on" as if $\pi$ was rational.
This section with six consecutive nines in the digits $\pi$ is now called the Feynman point.

 

[pinball1970]

Napoleon and Laplace regarding his latest works on celestial Mechanics.

Napoleon: 'M. Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its creator.'

Laplace: 'Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là. (I had no need of that hypothesis.)”

 

[pinball1970]

In physics, you don't have to go around making trouble for yourself - nature does it for you.

Frank Wilczek

 

[Swamp Thing]

TBH, I'm not very sure if this one even belongs in this thread, because it doesn't seem as intriguing a mystery as the author considers it to be. But FWIW, here goes...

From: Quirky Sides of Scientists: True Tales of Ingenuity and Error from Physics
By David R Topper

On Google Books

----------

----------------
If we treat the mystery sentence as rhetorical, maybe there is no mystery? As in, "For how can we ever see the sun rising in the west?"

Anyway, others reading this thread will either find it as intriguing as the author does, or not. What about you?

 

[pines-demon]

If we treat the mystery sentence as rhetorical, maybe there is no mystery? As in, "For how can we ever see the sun rising in the west?"

Anyway, others reading this thread will either find it as intriguing as the author does, or not. What about you?

I do not catch the oddity but I appreciate when somebody digs down to the original drafts and notes to check if something is right. Hopefully there will be more anecdotes in that book?

 

[pines-demon]

I just read this nice text about Poincaré inspecting mines: Poincaré Inspector of mines (Mactutor).

Here is the summarized version. Poincaré studied at the École Polytechnique, a military-engineering school and one of the oldest ones. For historical reasons, it is divided in "corps" (boats, bridges and so on), Poincaré was in the "Mining corp" so he had to supervise mines and check their safety, in order to keep his job.

On 1879, there was an explosion in one of the mines where he worked. At least, nine miners died. Poincaré helped in the rescue. Later he tried to figure out what happened by examining all the miners lamps. There were also two possible exits, so he had to figure out from which side the explosion happened. Here is the puzzle, as provided from source:

Lamp number 476, however, had a slit in it which was consistent with having been caused by a miner's pick. But there was a puzzle. Lamp 476 was recorded as being given to Auguste Pautot but was not found close to his body. Rather it was hanging from a support 15 centimetres above the ground and close to the corpse of Emile Perroz. Now Perroz was loading coal onto trucks and had no pick, while Pautot had been working with a pick. Poincaré deduced that Pautot had hit his lamp with his pick but had not noticed that he had damaged it. At this time there was no problem as no gas was present in the mine. Pautot went, for some unknown reason, to talk to Perroz and when he returned to where he had been working he took Perroz's lamp by mistake. When there was a release of firedamp from a seam an initial explosion occurred when it came in contact with the damaged lamp. The gas, partially burnt and still alight, reached the main tunnel where the flow of air was strong and a second explosion occurred. Poincaré wrote:-

The Company had done all that was humanly possible to prevent the accident. The catastrophe was caused by the awkwardness of Pautot, who paid with his life for one moment of carelessness. This man was not a bad workman and nobody ever complained about him; but similar mistakes are often made by the best miners.

Poincaré report was very praised but he was probably traumatized from the experience. He was later promoted and he never visited more mines. However, some months before his death, Poincaré wrote an article about mines, that starts with the following warning of caution :

A spark is enough to ignite an explosive mixture of air and firedamp, and then I refuse to describe the horrors which follow ...

 

[pines-demon]

This anecdote is titled Farmyard Thermodynamics and it is about Walther Nernst (the one that formulated the Third law of thermodynamics):

In 1920, [Nerst] acquired Zibelle, an extensive estate in East Prussia. There were cows, pigs, a pond with carp, and a thousand acres of land, which included fields of cereals and other crops. Nernst pursued his new interest in farming with characteristic single-mindedness.

It is related that on a tour of inspection on a cold winter’s morning he entered the cowshed and was astonished to discover how warm it was. Why was it heated, he asked? The reply came that the heat was generated only by the cows, the result of metabolic activity. Nernst was dumbstruck and immediately resolved to sell his cows and invest instead in carp: a thinking man, he said, cultivates animals that are in thermodynamic equilibrium with their surroundings and does not waste his money in heating the universe. So the old system of ponds on the estate was stocked with carp, which did not noticeably heat the water of their pond.

Source: Gratzer, Walter. (2002). Eurekas and Euphorias: The Oxford Book of Scientific Anecdotes, Oxford University Press.

I think this book will be very appreciated in this thread, I will try to find a copy...

 

[difalcojr]

A little off-track here, but this is a science forum too. I did not know that firedamp was another, older name for methane. Coal mines are definitely the most dangerous underground mines to work because of methane pockets.
However, the high deaths toll that the Wiki source shows below are outrageous! Compare "fewer than 100" deaths annually in U.S. mines to the number in China. China's production in tonnage is not 50 times greater than the U.S. It's about 7-8 times more today in my projection from this video below comparing countries' annual coal outputs which only goes to 2018.



And from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents
Coal mining accidents resulted in 5,938 immediate deaths in 2005, and 4746 immediate deaths in 2006 in China alone according to the World Wildlife Fund.[10] Coal mining is the most dangerous occupation in China, the death rate for every 100 tons of coal mined is 100 times that of the death rate in the US and 30 times that achieved in South Africa. Moreover, 600,000 Chinese coal miners, as of 2004, were suffering from Coalworker's pneumoconiosis (known as "black lung") a disease of the lungs caused by long-continued inhalation of coal dust. And the figure increases by 70,000 miners every year in China.[11]

Historically, coal mining has been a very dangerous activity and the list of historical coal mining disasters is a long one. In the US alone, more than 100,000 coal miners were killed in accidents over the past century,[1] with more than 3,200 dying in 1907 alone.[2] In the decades following this peak, an annual death toll of 1,500 miner fatalities occurred every year in the US until approximately the 1970s.[12] Coal mining fatalities in the US between 1990 and 2012 have continued to decline, with fewer than 100 each year.[13]

If these numbers are still the same today, then China does not prioritize human safety well from this analysis.

 

[difalcojr]

Better get this ore car of a thread back on track to historical anecdotes.

The mining textbook original classic, De Re Metallica, by Georgius Agricola, from Germany, written in 1556, was first translated into English by a mining engineer who became President in the U.S. Herbert Hoover served for one term only, 1929-1933. He and his wife, Lou Henry Hoover, both Stanford graduates, translated the Latin text in 1912. His lifetime was (1874-1964), so he was already ca. 37-38 when this was published. An engineer who became an unpopular president, as U.S. history shows it, but he and his wife's translation into English was very valuable too, as the history of science shows it.

Great book, lots of illustrations from original German woodcuts. Would make a great coloring book for kids. https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/Se...allica&sts=t&cm_sp=SearchF-_-topnav-_-Results

From the sleeve:
The book contains an unprecedented wealth of material on alluvial mining, alchemy, silver refining, smelting, surveying, timbering, nitric acid making, and hundreds of other phases of the medieval are of metallurgy.

Germans are known to be great miners, historically.

 

[pines-demon]

Today I bring wagers from the (recent) history of physics:

Thorne–Hawking bet (1974-c. 1988):
Contestants: Stephen Hawking vs. Kip Thorne
About: Cygnus X-1 is a black hole (Hawking against)
Prize: four year subscription to Private Eye for Harking, a year of Penthouse for Thorne.
Winner: Thorne

Thorne–Hawking–Preskill information bet (1997-2004):
Contestants: Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne, vs. John Preskill
About: if information of what enters a black is carried by the Hawking radiation (Thorne and Hawking against)
Prize: an encyclopedia of their choice
Winner: Preskill, (encyclopedia: Total Baseball, The Ultimate Baseball Encyclopedia)

Gross–Lane supersymmetry (1994–2017?):
Contestants: David Gross vs Ken Lane
About: LHC would not see supersymmetry (Gross against)
Prize: expensive dinner at Girardet’s, a three-star Swiss restaurant
Winner: Lane

Hawking–Kane on the Higgs (2002–2012):
Contestants: Stephen Hawking vs Gordon L. Kane
About: existence of the Higgs boson (Hawking against)
Prize: $100
Winner: Kane

Lisi–Wilczek Superparticle Bet (PF article) (2008-2015)
Contestants: Garrett Lisi vs Franck Wilczek
About: LHC will find supersymmetric particles (Lisi Against)
Prize: $1000
Winner: Lisi

Wager on supersymmetry (2000–2010):
Contestants: 20 physicists, (Nima Arkani-Hamed said no, I cannot find a detailed list)
About: "Do you think that in ten years from now, that is by noon C.E.T. June 21st, 2010, at least one supersymmetric partner of any of the known particles will be experimentally discovered?"
Prize: cognac bottles (price no less than $100)
Winner: Those who signed no.

Kaku–Horgan on Nobel on string theory (2002–2020):
Contestants: Michio Kaku vs journalist John Horgan
About: "no one will have won a Nobel Prize for work on superstring theory, membrane theory, or some other unified theory describing all the forces of nature” (Kaku against)
Prize: $2000
Winner: Horgan

Please be free to tell us of more wagers like these.

 

[pinball1970]

Today I bring wagers from the (recent) history of physics:

Thorne–Hawking bet (1974-c. 1988):
Contestants: Stephen Hawking vs. Kip Thorne
About: Cygnus X-1 is a black hole (Hawking against)
Prize: four year subscription to Private Eye for Harking, a year of Penthouse for Thorne.
Winner: Thorne

Thorne–Hawking–Preskill information bet (1997-2004):
Contestants: Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne, vs. John Preskill
About: if information of what enters a black is carried by the Hawking radiation (Thorne and Hawking against)
Prize: an encyclopedia of their choice
Winner: Preskill, (encyclopedia: Total Baseball, The Ultimate Baseball Encyclopedia)

Gross–Lane supersymmetry (1994–2017?):
Contestants: David Gross vs Ken Lane
About: LHC would not see supersymmetry (Gross against)
Prize: expensive dinner at Girardet’s, a three-star Swiss restaurant
Winner: Lane

Hawking–Kane on the Higgs (2002–2012):
Contestants: Stephen Hawking vs Gordon L. Kane
About: existence of the Higgs boson (Hawking against)
Prize: $100
Winner: Kane

Lisi–Wilczek Superparticle Bet (PF article) (2008-2015)
Contestants: Garrett Lisi vs Franck Wilczek
About: LHC will find supersymmetric particles (Lisi Against)
Prize: $1000
Winner: Lisi

Wager on supersymmetry (2000–2010):
Contestants: 20 physicists, (Nima Arkani-Hamed said no, I cannot find a detailed list)
About: "Do you think that in ten years from now, that is by noon C.E.T. June 21st, 2010, at least one supersymmetric partner of any of the known particles will be experimentally discovered?"
Prize: cognac bottles (price no less than $100)
Winner: Those who signed no.

Kaku–Horgan on Nobel on string theory (2002–2020):
Contestants: Michio Kaku vs journalist John Horgan
About: "no one will have won a Nobel Prize for work on superstring theory, membrane theory, or some other unified theory describing all the forces of nature” (Kaku against)
Prize: $2000
Winner: Horgan

Please be free to tell us of more wagers like these.

Hawking v Turok for gravitational waves, he won that one!

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/mar/18/stephen-hawking-gravitational-wave-bet-big-bang

 

[pinball1970]

A flat earth/round earth bet. This one does not read in the spirit of the Hawking, Thorne and Turok good natured mutually respectful wagers.

This got nasty!

https://www.scientificamerican.com/...modern-biology-got-suckered-by-flat-earthers/

 

[pines-demon]

I just found a funny anecdote about Paul Dirac:
During high school, Dirac liked riddles, but he answered them in a way that would eventually lead to the idea of thinking in antimatter. Here is one of the puzzles:

Three fishermen went fishing and camping overnight at a lake. After fishing all day, when evening came, they put the fish in a bucket and, tired, fell asleep in the tent. At midnight, one of the fishermen woke up and, tired of new whole escapade, decided to take one-third of all the fish, leave the tent quietly, and go home. When he counted the fish in the bucket, it turned out that the number of fish was indivisible by 3 . However, when he threw one fish back in the lake, the number was divisible by 3 , he took his one-third and went away. After a while, a second fisherman woke up and did the same, and then the third. The question was, how many fish were in the bucket?

Dirac's answer was:

-2

Source: Piela, L. (2006) Ideas of Quantum Chemistry.
I tried looking for the original source, and sources points out to: Paul Dirac and three fishermen, Kvant journal, No. 8 (1982), Academy of Science of the USSR. [Which I cannot find]
Petkovi, Miodrag. Famous puzzles of great mathematicians, says that it might be Fermi and not Dirac.

 

[Swamp Thing]

"The historical development of Quantum Theory", Mehra & Rechenberg

Background: The idea of spin had been published just a few weeks ago by Uhlenbeck and Goudsmit. Bohr read it but he was unconvinced; then he found Einstein at a party and they talked about it. Then as Bohr wrote in a letter to Ralph Kronig:

Einstein asked the very first moment I saw him what I believed about the spinning electron. Upon my question about the cause of the necessary mutual coupling between the spin axis and the orbital motion, he explained that this coupling was an immediate consequence of the theory of relativity. This remark acted as a complete relivation [sic, revelation] to me, and I have never since faltered in my conviction that we at last were at the end of our sorrows"
(Bohr to Kronig, 26 March 1926)

Credit: YouTube post by the channel Highly Entropic Mind, who wonders : "The problem is that back then they didn't have Dirac's equation, they didn't even have Schrödinger's, so how did Einstein see this? What reasoning led him to conclude this?"

Extracts from viewer replies:

At a time when everyone was grappling with the troubles of treating the electron as if it were actually orbiting the nucleus, it makes sense that Einstein, who loved thinking about this type of thing, would have spent a lot of time thinking about questions like "what does it look like from the electrons point of view?

Einstein's intuition about the connection between relativity and the behavior of electrons, coupled with Bohr's willingness to entertain new ideas, set the stage for further exploration and eventually led to significant advancements in our understanding of quantum mechanics.

 

[Swamp Thing]

Dirac's answer was... -2

Can we think of a scenario where that makes sense?
Maybe instead of a bucket, we have a person who has physical custody of the fish, but isn't enforcing fairness in distribution. He gives fish to anyone who asks, and agrees to owe fish if he has run out. So he owes two fish to the last guy.

 

[pinball1970]

Can we think of a scenario where that makes sense?
Maybe instead of a bucket, we have a person who has physical custody of the fish, but isn't enforcing fairness in distribution. He gives fish to anyone who asks, and agrees to owe fish if he has run out. So he owes two fish to the last guy.

I didn't read it like that first time. What's the actual breakdown?

-2 throws one so -1 which makes -3 which is divisible by 3?

Then what

 

[pines-demon]

I didn't read it like that first time. What's the actual breakdown?

-2 throws one so -1 which makes -3 which is divisible by 3?

Then what

-3, take a third of the fish and leave, there are -2 fish again in the bucket and so on.

Can we think of a scenario where that makes sense?
Maybe instead of a bucket, we have a person who has physical custody of the fish, but isn't enforcing fairness in distribution. He gives fish to anyone who asks, and agrees to owe fish if he has run out. So he owes two fish to the last guy.

Well you can go full Dirac into the analogy. There are two electrons, the first physicist wants a positron. He collides the two electrons against a target to produce a positron-electron pair. He takes the positron, and as now the number of electrons (3) is divisible by three, the first physicist also takes the extra electron.
You may repeat this as many times as you want.

 

[pinball1970]

-3, take a third of the fish and leave, there are -2 fish again in the bucket and so on.

Yeah that's what I thought till I tried to write it out as an operation.

If you class the minus fish as objects rather than a mathematical operation it works.

3, take a third of the fish and leave, there are -2 fish again in the bucket and so on

-2 throw one away gives -3, divide by 3 then take one. One what? A minus fish?
Or take one away from minus 3?

That gives minus 4. -3 -1 = -4 unless you mean take away a minus fish?
-3- -1= -2
Also what is "throw one away" mathematically?
@PeroK

 

[pines-demon]

Yeah that's what I thought till I tried to write it out as an operation.

If you class the minus fish as objects rather than a mathematical operation it works.


-2 throw one away gives -3, divide by 3 then take one. One what? A minus fish?
Or take one away from minus 3?

That gives minus 4. -3 -1 = -4 unless you mean take away a minus fish?
-3- -1= -2
Also what is throw one away mathematically?
@PeroK

I just see this operationally:

• Count the number of fish (-2)
• If the number of fish is not divisible by 3, remove (substract) a positive fish (-3)
• If it is divisible by 3, it can be divided equally in three integer parts (-1,-1,-1)
• Remove that third of the quantity and leave.

Hopefully we will be back with more anecdotes by tomorrow

 

[phinds]

Hopefully we will be back with more anecdotes by tomorrow

Yes ! Enough with the damned fish ! That whole story was fishy anyway.

 

[pinball1970]

Farewell and thanks for all the fish but we must move on.
Agreed.

Source, wiki. 2005, British climate scientist James Annan proposed bets with global warming denialists concerning whether future temperatures will increase. Two Russian solar physicists, Galina Mashnich and Vladimir Bashkirtsev, accepted the wager of US$10,000 (equivalent to $14,000 in 2022)[10] that the average global temperature during 2012–2017 would be lower than during 1998–2003.[11] The bet ended in 2017 with a win to Annan. Mashnich and Bashkirtsev did not honour the bet.[12] Previously, Annan first directly challenged Richard Lindzen. Lindzen had been willing to bet that global temperatures would drop over the next 20 years. Annan says that Lindzen wanted odds of 50–1 against falling temperatures. Lindzen, however, says that he asked for 2–1 odds against a temperature rise of over 0.4 °C.[13] Annan and other proponents of global warming state they have challenged other denialists to bets over global warming that were not accepted,[14] including Annan's attempt in 2005 to accept a bet that had been offered by Patrick Michaels in 1998 that temperatures would be cooler after ten years.[15] Annan made a bet in 2011 with Doctor David Whitehouse that the Met Office temperature would set a new annual record by the end of the year. Annan was declared to have lost on January 13, 2012.[16]