Ball-point pens actually work in space. The ink does now flow because of gravity, it flows because of ink viscosity.
Overthinking
21–30 of 96 posts
Re: Overthinking
#22It's not overthinking, it's called context.
If you give an engineering problem to an engineer in a corporate environment, he will try to do what he's been told to be a good job: good precision and low cost, complexity not being a problem as far as the solution is achieved. If he's given 1 hour, then using 59 minutes is just as valid as using 5. And rightly so.
As for the numeric problem, same thing. You are not giving a measure of "goodness" and you are not providing rules. I'd go ahead and fill in 2581 = fuck_you , where fuck_you is a constant defined as 3.15. That's a point-wise defined polynomial there. Voila, solved in 3 seconds. Just as valid as making up something as arbitrary as counting loops in a given numeric representation. Also, I'd bet the house I don't own that if I give that in a paper to a kid with no instructions he wouldn't come up with that "solution" - ever.
In the (urban legend) problem about the pen and pencil in zero-gravity, there is context. The objective is to take notes. It's a real world problem with a fixed solution, so yeah, just using a pencil would be a much better solution than engineering a special ballpen. An engineer can and should be expected to solve that. Engineers are expected to solve real world problems and consider real world situations and realistic expectations.
Re: Overthinking
#23The space pen affair is a well known urban myth, see for example http://io9.com/5838635/the-million-dollar-space-pen-hoax The second example is funny but it is a classic example of misdirection. It is made out to be about mathematics but has got nothing to with it. How exactly is that about overthinking something? The third example is a ingenious solution by the author himself, a solution that is the product of think…
Even more simple.. cut in 12 pieces, throw away one and rearrange the pieces.
That was what I answered on Quora. But there is a simpler solution; baking a rectangular pizza and cutting rectangular pieces.
Re: Overthinking
#24I'm probably an idiot, but how do you divide the string in 11 equal pieces without measuring the length and dividing by 11?
Based on my extensive pizza eating experience, the average pizza slice is no wider than the distance between my thumb and forefinger, so start by wrapping the string around thumb & forefinger 11 times, leaving a bit dangling at the end. Then gradually expand the distance between the two fingers until the loose bit is eliminated. I suspect you don't even have to mark the string with a pen (meaning the author possibly…
Oh but then it's just trial and error, unless like you say there is low enough friction to open your fingers and loosen all loops at the same time.
Quite unimpressive solution, imo. It's not about 'over thinking' any more, it's about giving up precision to find a low-tech solution.
Re: Overthinking
#25Re: Overthinking
#26Who cares about pens and pencils, use an ipad :) Overthinking leads to over-enginnering, because humans aren't great at knowing what to do with all the free time we'd have if we did our job in 10% of the time :) Perhaps overthinking is required to keep us busy. Even though we all claim our time is money, in reality most get paid by the hour and not by the amount of work that has been accomplished. Plus complexity giv…
Prior knowledge. Yes. Exactly what I was telling. I gave the numbers question to some of my friends and they all seem to be crippled by their prior knowledge. I was thinking about the iPad too. I wonder what astronauts are using now. Surely not the space pen.
Did you give it to any kids yourself, rather than relying on the article's claim that kids are usually able to solve it? If you're going to try to repeat the experiment, you must repeat all of it before claiming it repeatable.
Re: Overthinking
#27>> Conjuring complex mathematical equations may make you look smart but to become truly creative you need to be able to liberate your mind from the the shell of knowledge, education and adultification you have accumulated. Only then can you think like a child again.
This claims that creativity and education are diametral opposites. This essentially replicates the myth of the natural artist who can only achieve true creativity within nature and by forgetting culture. The basis for both assumptions is a fundamental divide between culture and nature, whereas culture is seen as hindering the creativity and freedom of the homo naturalis.
While I'm sure you can always find some cases where this distinction might hold true, there are plenty of others that reveal the false dichotomy at work here.
There is a difference between a solution perceived as complicated or simple, but there is no objective measurement for a difference in creativity. The combination and application of maths (in the example with the pizza cutter) is as much a creative use of ideas as is the "manual" method with the string.
Re: Overthinking
#28Indians are noxiously arrogant.
They don't even consider humility a virtue.
Study King Author and the sword in the stone.
They don't see that God runs the universe with laws such as "pride before a fall" and "humility before honors."
Re: Overthinking
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even more simple.. cut in 12 pieces, throw away one and rearrange the pieces.
That was what I answered on Quora. But there is a simpler solution; baking a rectangular pizza and cutting rectangular pieces.
You guys are still overthinking it. The real answer is to tell the customer to go to hell.
Re: Overthinking
#30The space pen affair is a well known urban myth, see for example http://io9.com/5838635/the-million-dollar-space-pen-hoax The second example is funny but it is a classic example of misdirection. It is made out to be about mathematics but has got nothing to with it. How exactly is that about overthinking something? The third example is a ingenious solution by the author himself, a solution that is the product of think…
It is made out to be about mathematics but has got nothing to with it.
Well, as I understood it Andrew Wiles' proof of Fermat's last theorem ultimately also came down to counting doughnut holes in things which you wouldn't normally regard as doughnuts, so there is some mathematics there. But yes, you would "normally" expect the mathematician to cut the pizza into five slices (which look like four, he explains, because one of them is a point), and rearrange them smoothly across the plane without collisions into two whole pizzas identical to the first, which he can do with the Axiom of Choice (see the "Banach Tarski Paradox" for the 3D case).
"Repeating this process ten times," says the mathematician, "you have the trivial partition of the original pizza into eleven identical pizzas."