Still not dead (or king) - interlude

[johnpalmer]

I'm still thinking of how a person with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome can fight back against the GOP, in hopes of making them sane again. Blogging is all I can think of. I'm not sure if I should try to blog elsewhere, or just say what I have to say here (or seeing if LongHairedWeirdo - my nom du blog - is available on LJ/DW). Any thoughts?

Interlude: At work, there are a collection of clever and cute bumper stickers. One bothered me for a long time... I finally figured it out recently, though.

It shows a picture of a brain, and a > (greater than) sign. On the right hand side, it had sigma (sum of) i = 1 to n, of (a picture of a bear)/n.

So:

brain picture > (sum from 1 to n) of (bearpicture)-sub-i, divided by n

Can you figure it out?

Hint: think cartoon

Comments

[onyxlynx]

Brain of very little bear?

Mind greater than the sum of its brewing?

(My head is not going anywhere useful right now.)

[onyxlynx]

Smarter than the average bear!

(It only took almost exactly three days. This is why I don't enter contests.)

Bingo!

[johnpalmer]

Three days isn't too bad - it took me weeks, seeing it every day. I'm not sure why I was sure it meant something, but I was... but I kept thinking in the wrong direction. "Your mind is greater than an imaginary bear? But why sum of n bear-times-i divided by n?" "A brain is greater than (n+1)/2 bears?"

(See, if it was the sum of bear, times the counting number, from 1 to n (one bear, two more bears, 3 more bears...), well the sum from 1 to n of the counting numbers is n(n+1)/2. Divide by n, it becomes (n+1)/2.)

I wish I could remember how and when I suddenly thought "it's an AVERAGE of bears!" at which point, it hit me.

It's fun, though, and a lot better than a legend I heard of a riddle on a radio show.

They asked "What's the first thing you know?"

Well, technically, they asked "What's 'the first thing you know'" - the inner quotes are *essential*, as you'll see.

People phone in guess after guess for three solid days, from the philosophical to the comical, pun-inspired and not. No one (so the legend goes) was ready for the real answer.

(I promise you: this is not a rickroll and is work safe.)
https://youtu.be/NwzaxUF0k18?t=16

The legend continues, quite reasonably for a legend, that a police escort was required to get the DJs out of the radio station.


(If you don't want to click on the link, I'll link the answer to this reply.)

Re: Bingo!

[johnpalmer]

In the theme song for an old comedy show, The Beverly Hillbillies[1], right after an "old mountaineer (so poor he can barely feed his family)..." discovered oil on his property, the song continues: "Well the first thing you know, old Jed's a millionaire".

So the answer to "'what's 'the first thing you know'?" is "old Jed's a millionaire."

[1] I'm 99% sure you know, or know of, the show. But since I work with people from other nations, I've gotten used to being certain that I explain some references. Apparently, I'm also used to people not randomly clicking links any more.

[mama-hogswatch.livejournal.com]

I think I'd have to see the image to be able to figure it out, as my math education isn't great!

FWIW, my political action is starting with blogging, but it's more of a study session. I want to make sure I understand clearly any other action I take. So, that's what's going on with my Support and Defend series.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

I think the image actually made it harder - though that does depend on how one thinks.

Do you know what you call it when you take a group of n values, sum them, and divide by n?

That's what finally tipped me off.

[redbird]

The only thing I can think of is some kind of reference to Winnie the Pooh and "a bear of little brain," but that doesn't seem to fit.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, you have the right species.

Do you know what the sum of n values, divided by n, is called? e.g., 8 different values added together, and divided by 8?

[redbird]

Oh. Right. I somehow missed the "divided by n" part there.

[redbird]

LongHairedWeirdo isn't currently in use on either LJ or DW. If I recall correctly, the maximum length for LJ usernames is 15 characters, in which case this wouldn't fit; Dreamwidth allows longer names (though I'm not sure offhand how long. (I just spent a couple of minutes poking through the FAQs, and couldn't find the length limit for LJ, just that if a name is too long, you'd get an error message.)

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

Here is what constitutes a valid LJ username:

• Maximum Length: 15 characters
• Allowed Characters: a-z, 0-9, and _ (underscore).
• Reserved: LiveJournal reserves certain prefixes, such as 'ex_', 'ext_', 'lj_', and 's_', for official or system use. These prefixes will produce an error of "Sorry, that is a reserved username."
• Underscores:Usernames can no longer begin or end with an underscore, nor contain more than one underscore in a row.

Dreamwidth's rules for usernames are "25 or fewer characters with letters, numbers, and hyphens (-) only, with the first and last characters of the username being letters and numbers only."

Note that LJ restricts you to 15 characters, while Dreamwidth gives you 25; LJ specifies only lower-case letter, while Dreamwidth doesn't say anything, but I've never seen a Dreamwidth username that included any upper-case letters: and Dreamwidth only likes hyphens, while LJ only likes underscores.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Dreamwidth allowed the full length name so I gave them my money first; I'll decide if I want to add LJ to the mix. At least I'll have a place where it's easy to *start* blogging.

Thank you; you and redbird helped me actually move forward.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! I'm always glad to provide useful information! (As it says in my LJ and DW user profiles, "I have a tendency to emit information and advice almost involuntarily, the way a cat sheds...")

Now I'll go look for the name(s) in both journals, and add you to my "friends" lists :-)

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

LongHairedWeirdo is in use now with a paid account. I'll have to decide if I should dual post to "longhairdweirdo" (drop the e in 'haired') on LJ or not. I don't think it matters... you can comment in DW with an LJ account, IIRC.

Thank you; you helped ensure I'd actually *do* something.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

"Slightly smarter than the average bear," of course :-D

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Bingo! Though I always heard Yogi use just "smarter than the average bear" as his catchphrase.

One of the additional tricky bits was realizing that it was "Bear-sub-i" not "bear * i" which could be "imaginary bear" or could be 1 bear when i = 1, 2 bears when i =2, etc..

But I couldn't think of how a brain is greater than a sum and quotient of imaginary bears, or now a brain is greater than (n+1)/2 bears.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

Ironically, I am severely dyscalculic, and my knowledge of mathematics (and mathematical symbols) is woefully inadequate. I somehow intuited that the right-hand expression might mean "average". Hmm... "average of bears"... "brain greater than"... oh, right, "smarter than the average bear!" (I've never actually seen any Yogi Bear cartoons, but the expression has been part of American cultural awareness for a long time, which is why I got it sort of wrong anyway.)

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Yes - Yogi Bear was so long ago that I wasn't going to bet against "slightly smarter" as the initial form of the phrase :-).