Annoying Questions I'd Like Answered...

Ted the Flayer · Post by **Ted the Flayer** » Fri Jun 29, 2012 3:36 am

http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/math ... d-at-math/

From my perspective, it seems valid. Anyone who is good at math have any opinions?

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Fri Jun 29, 2012 6:38 am

Yeah, it's valid and fairly trivial to prove with the assumptions that the male and female populations are equal and that homosexuality doesn't happen. Which are fair assumptions, because those are probably negligible effects.

Look at their pretty diagrams. The total number of unique sexual partners all men have had is equal to the number of lines that end at men. The total number of unique sexual partners all women have had is equal to the number of lines that end at women. Every line represents a unique sexual pairing between a man and a woman. After that, it's just definitional: if we ignore homosexuality, there's no way to add a line to that diagram that doesn't both end at a man and a woman at the same time. Every line you add has to increase the total number of sexual partners men and women have had each by 1. So the total number of sexual partners men have had is always equal to the total number of sexual partners women have had. After that, if you assume the populations are equal and stable, then the averages have to be the same as well.

This is actually a specific kind of graph in graph theory that I am totally blanking on the name of in a really embarrassing way, but it's basically a graph where all the nodes are divided into two groups, g1, and g2, and you can only make edges between g1 and g2, not from g1 to g1 or g2 to g2. And there's a theorem somewhere that says the sum of the degrees of all the vertices in g1 has to equal the sum of the degrees of all the vertices in g2 (i.e., the shit I said above). When you throw in the fact that the size of g1 and g2 are the same, then the average degree per vertex has to be the same as well.

This all breaks down if you allow connections within the group (homosexuality) or add a third group (transexuals? I dunno). Or allow for one-directional edges (i.e., a guy does a girl, but that girl doesn't know she has been done). That's right, I ended this post by combining graph theory with date rape. What have you done with your life?

Edit: Did I seriously say 'vertexes?' FML.

Neeeek · Post by **Neeeek** » Fri Jun 29, 2012 6:44 am

Ted the Flayer wrote:http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/math ... d-at-math/

From my perspective, it seems valid. Anyone who is good at math have any opinions?

The short version is there is more than one way of measuring "average":

Mean = Total up all the values and divide by the number of members in the group.

Median = The value of the exact middle value in the group.

Mode = The most common value within a group.

And that article conflates them to mean the same thing. Basically, the 6 for women, 20 for men is the median. Which means one of three things: 1) Women who have a lot of sex partners have a truly epic number of partners; or 2) Women underreport and men overreport their number of sexual partners; or 3) a combination of the two. I'd actually lean toward women underreport a lot more than men overreport, as a rule.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Fri Jun 29, 2012 6:57 am

Neeeek wrote:or 2) Women underreport and men overreport their number of sexual partners

This is probably your safest bet.

Look at the little image clip they give you of the first article, the ABC News one (or just click their link and go to page 2). It's a table containing both the median and the average, and average in this case obviously means 'mean.' Firstly, because no one ever uses modes (hyperbole), and secondly, because it would just be straight-up unlikely that the mode of the entire data set happens to be the mean of the mode of the male and female data sets.

And it's the numbers from that column that the Cracked Article refers to, not the medians. So, for at least one of those articles, the Cracked response is dead on. I'm too lazy to look at the other two three, four, however many articles they're criticizing.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Fri Jun 29, 2012 9:44 pm

Why on earth do people ask so bloody much for used camping equipment?

I've even come across people listing their items on craigslist with link to stores where you can buy a new version of the item they're selling for less than they want for their used stuff!!

I don't get it.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Fri Jun 29, 2012 10:39 pm

Sentimental value?

"This tent protected me from twelve rainstorms and a small avalanche, so it's surely worth at least $100."

Nevermind the fact that now the tent is covered in scratches and smells like mildew.

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Fri Jul 06, 2012 8:29 am

Why do places like Walmart and the like have ceilings that are like, 40 fucking feet tall? It usually looks like you could lower the roof by 10 feet and lose no appreciable store space. I can't imagine this helps heating and cooling at all, so why are the ceilings and roofs so bloody high?

Wouldn't it make more sense to make it two stories instead, so they'd require less of a land footprint? I dunno. These places just bug me.

erik · Post by **erik** » Fri Jul 06, 2012 1:55 pm

Meikle641 wrote:Why do places like Walmart and the like have ceilings that are like, 40 fucking feet tall? It usually looks like you could lower the roof by 10 feet and lose no appreciable store space. I can't imagine this helps heating and cooling at all, so why are the ceilings and roofs so bloody high?

Wouldn't it make more sense to make it two stories instead, so they'd require less of a land footprint? I dunno. These places just bug me.

Some of them aren't quite that tall. According to internets, the usual height is around 25 feet.

But if the height were actually normal ceiling size then:

• Walking between aisles would make many people feel claustrophobic
• There would be no security camera coverage unless there were cameras for each and every aisle
• In the back storage areas they could not stack stuff as high as they do (a lot more of that high-storage space is used outside of shopping areas)

Building a 2nd story is more expensive than just building on more land and would cut into margins. Also, you'd lose the above psychological, security and storage benefits of a higher ceiling.

K · Post by K » Fri Jul 06, 2012 6:07 pm

Meikle641 wrote:Why do places like Walmart and the like have ceilings that are like, 40 fucking feet tall? It usually looks like you could lower the roof by 10 feet and lose no appreciable store space. I can't imagine this helps heating and cooling at all, so why are the ceilings and roofs so bloody high?

Wouldn't it make more sense to make it two stories instead, so they'd require less of a land footprint? I dunno. These places just bug me.

They get a tax break for being "warehouses" instead of "retail stores" and the ceiling is needed to be called a warehouse.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Fri Jul 06, 2012 6:21 pm

Yeah, the Walmart business model is a beauty of bizarre corporate loopholes. If I recall correctly, every single thing on their shelves isn't owned by Walmart - it's owned by the manufactuer/distributor. Walmart doesn't buy it until you literally check out and run it through the bar code scanner. Hell of a way to lower overhead.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Fri Jul 06, 2012 6:28 pm

Wait, a building clearly used as a retail store in every conceivable way (all retail stores need to store their stock too) is given lower taxes as if it were just a storage facility?

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Fri Jul 06, 2012 6:35 pm

http://walmartwatch.com

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Fri Jul 06, 2012 7:33 pm

Welcome to Walmart, corporate profits through slave labor, and cheating like bastards.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Jul 06, 2012 7:40 pm

Welcome to Capitalism!

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Fri Jul 06, 2012 7:41 pm

Touche.

I bow to your superior statement.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Jul 06, 2012 7:45 pm

Yeah, I pretty much laugh at attempts to regulate cheating in capitalism, because unfair advantage is pretty much the entire damned point.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Fri Jul 06, 2012 8:10 pm

Glad someone else said it because it's not like WalMart is the only place that does this. Close to me, there's ShopKo, KMart, Target, Fred Meyer, and most grocery stores, too.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Fri Jul 06, 2012 10:06 pm

Explaining this away as "Capitalism, duh" seems a little trite. The response from the other side is basically "Democracy, duh." So a mix of both arguments is a valid response rather than just using one of them. Another reason that Walmart is targeted is because they are more ubiquitous than the rest. Fred Meyer or ShopKo don't exist in the northeast. I have to go 5 miles out of my way to go to Target (and walmart) and I live in a suburban location.* It's far easier to point a figure at a mountain than it is to a tree. I know the analogy isn't apt but it works. Walmart is also more common in rural areas than other stores. My college town had a Walmart and a Kroger and these were the points of attraction. Kroger was tiny compared to Walmart.

*Incidentally, aside from Shopmart, the closest grocery store is Costco and that too by only a mile. This is weird. For someone used to walking to get milk or other groceries, needing a car to do such is strange. This coming from someone who lived in East Texas.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Fri Jul 06, 2012 10:34 pm

Well, why do you take it for granted that there should be different rates for warehouses than for stores? If the rates are the same, there's no incentive for Walmart to go through gymnastics to be a warehouse.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Jul 07, 2012 12:04 am

It's not "Capitalism, duh." It's "our economic model is as close to Survival of the Fittest as you can possibly get and still have one, so what do you expect." Some people who support Capitalism may think that it's supposed to protect the small business and that good ideas will win, but that's like saying a smart chipmunk can become king of the jungle, it's ain't happening because a tiger will eat it long before it even gets a chance. The small guy may have the best idea ever, but the big guy is big and knows how to use that to it's advantage, and will steamroll the little guy without the little guy even having much of an opportunity to avoid it.

violence in the media · Sun Jul 08, 2012 10:09 pm

Now Prak, we all know that it's onerous gub'ment regulations that keep the little guy down. Big business never tries to run the small business out of town.

[/sarcasm]

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Sun Jul 08, 2012 10:32 pm

violence in the media wrote:Now Prak, we all know that it's onerous gub'ment regulations that keep the little guy down. Big business never tries to run the small business out of town.

[/sarcasm]

Was that made to rhyme on purpose?

violence in the media · Sun Jul 08, 2012 10:39 pm

Of course not. Though it inadvertently happens a lot.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Mon Jul 09, 2012 8:17 am

But that American notion of every man can make it big is what allows for such movements and also their necessity. My point is that the economic model as a rebuttal is not worth considering if you don't couple it with some form of the everyman argument.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Jul 09, 2012 1:50 pm

Cynic wrote:But that American notion of every man can make it big is what allows for such movements and also their necessity. My point is that the economic model as a rebuttal is not worth considering if you don't couple it with some form of the everyman argument.

Every everyman argument is fucking dumb. Why do you have to couple a correct argument with a dumb one?