Biggest science or math pet peeve

[S.G. Janssens]

Sure, but you and any linguist would probably agree that the genitive case no longer exists in Dutch.

Maybe the linguist is from Des Gravenhage or from Des Hertogenbosch.

 

[mathwonk]

I have two pet peeves. first are people who stupidly persist in failing to understand things I think I understand, and second, even worse, are people who arrogantly decline to cut me slack over things they understand but I don't!

 

[jack action]

When talking about a car under acceleration, some people say that the center of gravity is changing place. It's not changing place, it's a moment that is added.

 

[Pepper Mint]

I find many of this thread's posts sound truly like complaints instead.
I don't have any pet peeve experience to share actually, only that every time the rain stops, my loved ones around me e.g my mother are bugged the most while I am perfectly fine (sigh).

 

[deskswirl]

Saying and printing "the flow of current through the device"... which literally means "the flow of the time rate of change of charge carriers through the device" rather than saying " the current through the device is"

I cringe that this convention is used in nearly every electrical engineering and even some (especially lower level) physics textbooks. I believe this is related to the conventional current direction (out of positive, into negative terminal of sources for negatively charged composed currents) vs. the electron flow model (i.e. negatively charge particles are attracted to the positive node and vice versa).

 

[sophiecentaur]

Saying and printing "the flow of current through the device"... which literally means "the flow of the time rate of change of charge carriers through the device" rather than saying " the current through the device is"

I cringe that this convention is used in nearly every electrical engineering and even some (especially lower level) physics textbooks. I believe this is related to the conventional current direction (out of positive, into negative terminal of sources for negatively charged composed currents) vs. the electron flow model (i.e. negatively charge particles are attracted to the positive node and vice versa).

A bit of tautology never hurt anybody. And when you think of the other real rubbish ideas that some people expound on about electrical current . . . . . . . .
I would not find it strange for someone to talk about the Ocean Currents flowing across the Atlantic.

 

[sophiecentaur]

I find many of this thread's posts sound truly like complaints instead.
I don't have any pet peeve experience to share actually, only that every time the rain stops, my loved ones around me e.g my mother are bugged the most while I am perfectly fine (sigh).

This idea goes back to the time, I think, when people's clothing was just not waterproof or water shedding and when houses were unheated. If you got very wet and cold then it stayed with you for days or weeks. That could really give you aches and pains and lower your resistance to infections. Add that ancient 'wisdom' to a mother's natural care for her beloved offspring and you get the message that sitting on damp grass risks sudden death.

 

[Bystander]

"Plank" for Planck.

 

[sophiecentaur]

It's a pet peeve for pirates, I believe.

 

[Aufbauwerk 2045]

Without a doubt anything and everything to do with BODMAS and PEMDAS. If it's not obvious, use brackets. Everything else is ambiguous and not worth discussing.

In particular, teaching order of operations instead of some "real" maths!

Parentheses can clutter up a nice expression. Some people like RPN. I knew a guy once who was rather smug about his HP calculator and why smart people use RPN.

Lisp combines the worst of both worlds. It's all messed up with parentheses. Some people say it stands for Lots of Inane Stupid Parentheses. In addition, you use prefix notation such as (+ 2 3) instead of 2 + 3.

Of course you can nest expressions so you could write (+ (- 7 (* 1 0)) (/ 3 3)) for the above example. I think this is one reason Lisp is not more popular.

 

[Aufbauwerk 2045]

Without a doubt anything and everything to do with BODMAS and PEMDAS. If it's not obvious, use brackets. Everything else is ambiguous and not worth discussing.

In particular, teaching order of operations instead of some "real" maths!

There is an alternative, not that I recommend it for human use. Some people like RPN. I knew a guy once who was rather smug about his HP calculator and why smart people use RPN. It's definitely easy for the computer to parse using a simple stack-based algorithm.

Lisp combines the worst of both worlds. It's all messed up with parentheses. Some people say it stands for Lots of Inane Stupid Parentheses. In addition, you use prefix notation such as (+ 2 3) instead of 2 + 3.

Of course you can nest expressions so you could write (+ (- 7 (* 1 0)) (/ 3 3)) for the above example. I think this is one reason Lisp is not more popular.

 

[Hercuflea]

Wait, so does this mean that we can't write binomial coefficients inline as $n!/k!(n-k)!$ ? Because $n!/(k!(n-k)!)$ looks atrocious to me. Just my two cents.

If you wrote it without the extra parentheses in a TI calculator you would get the wrong answer.

I personally like the extra parentheses because it removes all ambiguity. I am very liberal with my parentheses. You can't go wrong with too many parentheses, but you can with too few parentheses.

 

[russ_watters]

I probably said this already, but it happened again: people confusing power and energy and doing even worse things with units. A couple of days ago I saw a Mythbusters episode where they tested the old myth that it is better to leave a light bulb on for a long time than switch it off every time you leave a room. They used gibberish units such as (IIRC) W/hr and Wh/s. The numbers were so bizarre for the second that I couldn't figure out what they had actually done even though they described it. It was supposed to be start-up energy, I think for one second, but the numbers were huge.

 

[dkotschessaa]

When I tell people I am studying topology, they think it has something to do with maps.

 

[sophiecentaur]

I know you say it. My point is that there is no logical reason to say it like that.

I agree but the 'British way' still not good and mixes up the significances. The standard time format of yyyymmddtt.tt is by far the best and can be used in computations with very little effort. But there's as much hope of that getting adopted generally as of a world wide standard mains supply voltage and all driving on the correct (left?) side of the road.

 

[sophiecentaur]

I am studying topology,

Humming tops of whipping tops? Or what about carrot tops?

 

[micromass]

When I tell people I am studying topology, they think it has something to do with maps.

But it does have something to do with maps. That's a big part of topology.

 

[dkotschessaa]

But it does have something to do with maps. That's a big part of topology.

Point taken.
(And set as well).

-Dave K

 

[Charles Link]

Is the four color theorem part of that? I actually was a classmate of the son of the fellow who proved that theorem=a professor named Haken at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign=about 40 years ago.

 

[OCR]

Is the four color theorem part of that?

Sure does look like it is...

You even have the date right...

...about 40 years ago.

Haken was involved with the unknotting problem, also.

 

[Charles Link]

Sure does look like it is...

You even have the date right...

Thank you for the "link". I remembered his son's name "Armin" who is even included in the "link". Armin was in my freshman "Modern Physics" class. (Physics 108). The thing I remember him best for though was that he rode his unicycle on campus one day. (I tried to ride a unicycle one time=I could not stay balanced.)

 

[OCR]

Thank you for the "link".

... you're welcome.

 

[dkotschessaa]

Is the four color theorem part of that? I actually was a classmate of the son of the fellow who proved that theorem=a professor named Haken at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign=about 40 years ago.

The four color theorem can be thought of variously as a topology or combinatorics problem.

Just to clarify if anyone cares: I believe that @micromass's reference to maps though was punning on "maps" as synonymous with "functions."
My original gripe had to do with people confusing topology with topography.

 

[micromass]

I believe that @micromass's reference to maps though was punning on "maps" as synonymous with "functions."

No, that was not my intention. I actually did mean maps as in charts and atlases.

 

[dkotschessaa]

No, that was not my intention. I actually did mean maps as in charts and atlases.

Oh.

 

[jack action]

About the definitions of topology:

1. (mathematics) A branch of mathematics studying those properties of a geometric figure or solid that are not changed by stretching, bending and similar homeomorphisms.
2. (mathematics) A collection τ of subsets of a set X such that the empty set and X are both members of τ and τ is closed under finitary intersections and arbitrary unions.
3. (medicine) The anatomical structure of part of the body.
4. (computing) The arrangement of nodes in a communications network.
5. (technology) The properties of a particular technological embodiment that are not affected by differences in the physical layout or form of its application.
6. (topography) The topographical study of geographic locations or given places in relation to their history.
7. (dated) The art of, or method for, assisting the memory by associating the thing or subject to be remembered with some place.

Furthermore the etymology is:

From Late Latin topologia, from Ancient Greek τόπος ‎(tópos, “place, locality”) + -(o)logy ‎(“study of, a branch of knowledge”).

I would have been the first to relate topology to geography.

 

[vela]

When I tell people I am studying topology, they think it has something to do with maps.

Tell people you study these:

 

[TeethWhitener]

Oh man I had to look up this thread because I just now thought of another one that I haaaate: ordinal vs. cardinal exponentiation. $2^{\omega}=\omega$ but $2^{\aleph_0} \ne \aleph_0$. It's always driven me batty.

 

[Charles Link]

Oh man I had to look up this thread because I just now thought of another one that I haaaate: ordinal vs. cardinal exponentiation. $2^{\omega}=\omega$ but $2^{\aleph_0} \ne \aleph_0$. It's always driven me batty.

@TeethWhitener Interesting example you gave. $2^{\omega}=\omega$. I tried solving for $\omega$, at least for a numerical solution for, but it appears even in the real numbers, this one does not have a solution. :)

 

[TeethWhitener]

@TeethWhitener Interesting example you gave. $2^{\omega}=\omega$. I tried solving for $\omega$, at least for a numerical solution for, but it appears even in the real numbers, this one does not have a solution. :)

Well, it doesn't have a finite solution, anyway.

Edit: For a primer on ordinal arithmetic, see the Wiki page here.

 

[newjerseyrunner]

My biggest math pet peeve is when people try to explain complicated math in plain text. It ends up as a completely unreadable set of nested parenthesis. I prefer people use a whiteboard and take a picture (most forums don't have advanced maths symbols like this one does)

This is not specific to mathematics with numbers, any logical language should have structure. I hate seeing MySQL queries all on one line too.

 

[lekh2003]

My pet peeve is the lack of units and dimensional analysis in math. Similarly, I would prefer that Physics would use radians more often than degrees.

I think I just revived this thread.