Ceaseless Student

So this is actually an old thought, but I haven’t really pushed it around much.

Numbers are really bad at being said. They’re also not good at being thought about or manipulated mentally when they get big or small. They give information in all the wrong places. For example: seven-hundred-and-sixty billion has all of its good information in two places. Most of it is in billion. Then there’s a lot in hundred and some in the fact that its seven hundreds… My point is: it sucks. Whoever designed numbers didn’t do good design. (<-- j/k kids) So let's look at how this has been solved before - scientific notation. 7.6x10^11 Not bad. Especially because the brain handles the whole thing as a unit so it can get the 11 early on. The order of magnitude is by far the most important thing. Even better is 7.6e11. That has less extraneous stuff and says the same thing. But it's not meant to be spoken. Even so, if you say 7.6e11 it's much faster than seven-hundred-and-sixty billion.

But it could be better. The order of magnitude should be first. So what I like is inverting the order of magnitude and the fine grain number and saying the x10^.
Something like: 11mag7.6

And we could get rid of another couple of syllables by hitting small numbers with a contraction for x10^ -

As in a microsecond is 6neg second. Oh yeah. You could just leave out a number and have a 1 be implied.

Just to use it somewhere I’ll copy over a problem from my estimation class. We’re estimating the budget of Pasadena. We’ve found that Pasadena has about 4mag2 acres of land. We estimated the cost of land at $6mag/acre. And we’re going with a property tax of 1%. So:

4mag2 acres * 6mag USD/acre * 2neg USD/USD = 8mag2 USD

I like that we the format of the number makes it natural to do the exponents first (which is the important data. I’m not sure how I feel about something like:

3mag2 * 1neg8 = 2mag16 = 3mag1.6

It should really get into the last form, but the second form is more natural. Meh.

Thoughts?

So it’s been a while.

This semester is looking to be seriously busy. I’m doing enough that Outlook has me booked for 30 hours a week of scheduled stuff. Just classes and SigSys ninja meetings really. Then I have to do the work for all those 30 hours of classes and grading for SigSys and stuff… Oh! And I’ve taken up a hobby! I’m baking bread multiple times a week so that should be exciting - that tends to happen concurrently with reading for something so it doesn’t actually take that much virgin time.

Anyhow. Now that I’m busy I thought I should get back to this blog. After all, it exists to hold neat stuff that I learn and I’m currently learning lots of neat stuff.

So this semester will see some good stuff:

• Advanced digital systems: We’re making a video game console on an FPGA. I’m not sure how bloggable it’ll be, but the class is certainly cool.
• Estimation: This is an IS (independent study) I’m doing with a few other kids. It’s a lot of order of magnitude physics estimation, dimensional analysis etc. This is a lot of neat stuff that should be fun to toss here - expect to see it a disproportionate amount.
• History of Analog Circuit Design: This is what I’m doing for my OSS (Olin Self Study). I’m pretty much trying to see if I can answer the question “How the #$% did someone think of that?!”
• 6 Books that Changed the World: This class is a half semester gig where we read and analyze a book a week. Books are: The Communist Manifesto, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Darwin, The Prince, The Art of War and a book of my choice which will likely be John Maynard Keynes’ The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. I’m planning on also reading Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations but that might be far too optimistic. Oh well.
• Controls: Really sweet class on a really sweet subject (feedback, transfer functions etc.) that is of questionable bloggability.
• MAD VLSI2: This one probably won’t be up here much. Neat stuff, but advanced enough to need more context than I want to provide here or you, dear reader, likely want to read.
• Signals and Systems: I’m ninjaing this class with two other kids. This is neat stuff. I’ll see if I can toss up concepty stuff here while avoiding the mathy stuff.
• Intermediate DiffEQ: Yeah. Doubt this will be here ever. It’s also the next half of the semester.
• Bread: w00t!

So that’s my semester. I’m pretty excited.