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“Dihydrogen monoxide” joke gets DJs suspended

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Re: “Dihydrogen monoxide” joke gets DJs suspended

#71

Post by ruswick »

learc83 wrote: post #55
ruswick wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're asserting that, simply because people are capable of holding down jobs, owning homes and producing kids, that the general stigmatization of sciences and pervasive anti-intellectualism is insignificant because people can still intuit what constitutes as good and bad education and policy? This is absurd. Just because people may be capable of functioning in the real world without access to scientific knowledge do…

>As an aside, "Half of the population is below average intelligence" is false. Half of the population is below the median intelligence. Not false. Median is a type of average . He never said half the population is below the arithmetic mean.

In coloquial terms, the average is synonymous with the mean, and the median is treated as distinct. Moreover, if he truly meant that half of the population was below the median, why would he use an ambiguous term like the "average?" At worst, it's incorrect, and at best, it's an ambiguity that is not necessarily correct.

Re: “Dihydrogen monoxide” joke gets DJs suspended

#72

Post by mschuster91 »

youngerdryas wrote: post #22
mschuster91 wrote: post #2

As an European, all I can say is "Fuckin' stupid American rednecks". Jeez, do the US have at least A BIT chemistry lessons in their education system?

If Europeans could just get over the chip on their shoulder maybe they could actually do something besides whine about Americans.

European countries score much better on LOTS of performance indicators, several of which have been on HN the last weeks:

Medical coverage (both insurances, and the quality of the medical service itself), school education levels in standardized tests, financial stability (both the country itself as well as the individual states), average wealth, poor-rich spread, amount and quality of science research... so yes, we Europeans DO get something done. In contrast to the USA, where everything actually important is either blocked off by extremist tea baggers or cut down by the sequester (which is a side effect of the mentioned teabaggers).

Re: “Dihydrogen monoxide” joke gets DJs suspended

#73

Post by kps »

mschuster91 wrote: post #49
dasil003 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to examine the underpinnings of your desire to find fault with Americans since this kind of comment raises much more questions about your psychology than it does about Americans. The fact is that this joke sometimes even temporarily fools people who are familiar with water's molecular make-up (and yes they do teach this in every American high school) because most common substances are not referred to b…

I have to admit that especially in Germany there is a huge, huge bias (from our news media) towards pointing the USA as a nation of radical right-wing retards. US-related news here is mainly about: Tea Party, gun violence, wars, more Tea Party, corruption and dumbness on both popular parties, sheer political idiocy (sequester), and a record amount of bigotry throughout the society. To the USA: deal with your external…

So you're saying that Germans are equally prone to uncritically accept misleading media coverage?

Re: “Dihydrogen monoxide” joke gets DJs suspended

#74

Post by learc83 »

ruswick wrote: post #71
learc83 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As an aside, "Half of the population is below average intelligence" is false. Half of the population is below the median intelligence. Not false. Median is a type of average . He never said half the population is below the arithmetic mean.

In coloquial terms, the average is synonymous with the mean, and the median is treated as distinct. Moreover, if he truly meant that half of the population was below the median, why would he use an ambiguous term like the "average?" At worst, it's incorrect, and at best, it's an ambiguity that is not necessarily correct.

> at best, it's an ambiguity that is not necessarily correct.

It is definitively correct.

You knew what he meant, you just wanted another jab to back up your argument. If you're going to be pedantic at least be correct.

Let's divide the world into 3 types of people.

Type A. Those without enough mathematical knowledge to pick up on any possible ambiguity. Who probably don't really know what median means in the first place (the majority of people).

Type B. Those with enough mathematical knowledge to understand what he means by "average." (probably the majority of people on hacker news)

Type C. Those who got just far enough in math to realize that there is a difference between arithmetic mean, and median, but not far enough to realize that average is a general term.

Which of those types are going to confused by the term average instead of median?

Re: “Dihydrogen monoxide” joke gets DJs suspended

#75

Post by youngerdryas »

mschuster91 wrote: post #72
youngerdryas wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Europeans could just get over the chip on their shoulder maybe they could actually do something besides whine about Americans.

European countries score much better on LOTS of performance indicators, several of which have been on HN the last weeks: Medical coverage (both insurances, and the quality of the medical service itself), school education levels in standardized tests, financial stability (both the country itself as well as the individual states), average wealth, poor-rich spread, amount and quality of science research... so yes, we Eu…

Fine your satisfied with Europe, that doesn't mean you have to be an ass.

Re: “Dihydrogen monoxide” joke gets DJs suspended

#76

Post by drdaeman »

jamesrcole wrote: post #68
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #35

Oh stop being so high and mighty. Chemophobia! Really? H2O is probably the most widely known chemical formula - go out and ask twenty random people what it is and you will get 19 answers for water. Ask those same 19 people what dihydrogen monoxide is at 8am on a Tuesday when they are trying to get kids dressed and out the door, then say "contaminated" and the answer will be "I don't know but it sounds nasty" Yes it's…

> H2O is probably the most widely known chemical formula ... Ask those same 19 people what dihydrogen monoxide is ... the answer will be "I don't know but it sounds nasty" ... Yes it's true - half of the population is below average intelligence I'd go further. It's really easy to think the meaning of "dihydrogen monoxide" is obvious if you already know how to parse terms written in that language . But it's far from o…

I don't know about education in US, but I suspect basic chemistry is a part of compulsory education program. Or I'm wrong?

Re: “Dihydrogen monoxide” joke gets DJs suspended

#77

Post by mhartl »

taylodl wrote: post #58
jakobe wrote: post #53

It's amazing how everybody is so quick to dismiss the general public as "stupid" just because they are not familiar with some domain specific terminology.

How much you want to bet the water company didn't know the chemical name of water is dihydrogen monoxide? Otherwise they could have explained to the callers that dihydrogen monoxide is, in fact, water and they were simply victims of an April Fool's joke. But that doesn't seem to be the path that was taken.

the chemical name of water is dihydrogen monoxide

But it's not. From La Wik [1]:

"Dihydrogen monoxide", shortened to "DHMO", is a name for water that is consistent with basic rules of chemical nomenclature, but is not among the names published by IUPAC and is almost exclusively used in humorous context.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dihydrogen_monoxide_hoax

Re: “Dihydrogen monoxide” joke gets DJs suspended

#78

Post by mschuster91 »

youngerdryas wrote: post #75
mschuster91 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

European countries score much better on LOTS of performance indicators, several of which have been on HN the last weeks: Medical coverage (both insurances, and the quality of the medical service itself), school education levels in standardized tests, financial stability (both the country itself as well as the individual states), average wealth, poor-rich spread, amount and quality of science research... so yes, we Eu…

Fine your satisfied with Europe, that doesn't mean you have to be an ass.

It's not my fault that the USA in general doesn't care about their external image. I'm just pointing out what the rest of the world thinks about the USA.

Re: “Dihydrogen monoxide” joke gets DJs suspended

#79

Post by philh »

ruswick wrote: post #51
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #35

Oh stop being so high and mighty. Chemophobia! Really? H2O is probably the most widely known chemical formula - go out and ask twenty random people what it is and you will get 19 answers for water. Ask those same 19 people what dihydrogen monoxide is at 8am on a Tuesday when they are trying to get kids dressed and out the door, then say "contaminated" and the answer will be "I don't know but it sounds nasty" Yes it's…

You're asserting that, simply because people are capable of holding down jobs, owning homes and producing kids, that the general stigmatization of sciences and pervasive anti-intellectualism is insignificant because people can still intuit what constitutes as good and bad education and policy? This is absurd. Just because people may be capable of functioning in the real world without access to scientific knowledge do…

> As an aside, "Half of the population is below average intelligence" is false. Half of the population is below the median intelligence.

If intelligence is normally distributed, then the mean and median are equal.

Re: “Dihydrogen monoxide” joke gets DJs suspended

#80

Post by [deleted] »

learc83 wrote: post #64
Karunamon wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Not false. Median is a type of average ?? I thought those were two distinct things. The median is the "middle" amount in a set of numbers, while the average or mean is the sum of all the numbers in the set, divided by how many numbers there are.

Arithmetic mean, geometric mean, median, mode etc... those are all specific methods of finding the average. The most common average in ordinary use is the arithmetic mean, but they are not the same thing and the word average is much more general.

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