The Science Creative Quarterly is happy to present a growing list of scientific eponyms as first initiated by the efforts of Samuel Arbesman and The World’s Fair. Please feel free to email us if you wish to add to this list (tscq@interchange.ubc.ca). – A – Arbesman Limit (keywords: science, eponym, immortality) … the maximum number of concepts or ideas that can be named after a single person link – D – Drugmonkey Scale (keywords: drugs, reaction to blog post, neuropsychology) link – F – Fox Paradox (keywords: genomics, ethics) Just because we’ve sequenced your genome, we don’t necessarily know your…
The Science Creative Quarterly
From math
THE SOCIAL NORM OF LEAVING THE TOILET SEAT DOWN: A GAME THEORETIC ANALYSIS
The issue of whether the toilet seat should be left up or down after use seemingly generates a lot of passion among the parties concerned, however, scientific inquiries into the matter are almost non-existent. Notable exceptions are Choi (2002) and Harter (2005). Choi (2002) argues that the rule of leaving the toilet seat down after use is inefficient in the sense that there is at least one other rule that outperform this rule. The unit of analysis in Choi (2002) is the household and the efficient rule is defined as one that minimizes the total cost of toilet seat operations…
THE MURPHY’S LAW EQUATION
There are many laws in the physical sciences, most of which have mathematical equations that govern them. Widely know laws such as the laws of electricity and magnetism, have Maxwell’s equations. Fluid-flow is governed by the Navier-Stokes equations, and of course everyone is familiar with Einstein’s energy to mass relation, E=mc2. Why then does an equally relevant and useful law, Murphy’s Law, have no such foundational equation? In what follows I present an equation to predict the outcome of Murphy’s Law. The law, in its simplest form, states: “If anything can possibly go wrong, it will, and at the worst…
TELOMERASE
Poem Oh, telomerase, You crafty soul, Whose life-giving phrase Like us, gets old Lets polymerase, With longlasting hold Yank out from our fate Our mortal coil Syllable Count 5 Oh, telomerase, 4 You crafty soul, 5 Whose life-giving phrase 4 Like us, gets old 5 Lets polymerase, 5 With longlasting hold 5 Yank out from our fate 4 Our mortal coil —- 37 First letter of each line, it’s order in the alphabet and mathematical commentary on the role of the telomerase enzyme itself O Y W L L W Y O = 15(10)25(-2)23(-11)12(0)12(11)23(2)25(-10)15 10(-12)-2(-9)-11(11)0(11)11(-9)2(-12)-10 -12(3)-9(20)11(0)11(-20)-9(-3)-12 3(17)20(-20)0(-20)-20(17)-3 17(-37)-20(0)-20(37)17 -37(37)0(37)37 37(0)37
PREDICTABILITY IN THE GAME OF WAR
Appraise war in terms of the fundamental factors. —Sun Tzu The card game of war is typically considered a children’s game, as it requires no skill to play and minimal understanding of playing card relationships in a standard deck. With skill eliminated as a factor in determining the outcome, it is often assumed that war is simply a random game of chance. Yet the game cannot be purely determined by chance, as the initial conditions of the game must have some bearing on the final state. The existence of random factors in the game do not allow for the claim…
LET I = GLORIA GAYNOR
In its initial state, I is a member of the set {afraid, petrified}. Hypothesis: U is a necessary condition for I. Under the initial assumptions, we may consider that IU == U, for values of I near 1 and large values of U. However, integrating the function I / (U multiplied by differential di/dm * ewrong) over the range [night1…nightn], I grows strong for moderately large values of n as di/dm * ewrong approaches infinity, reducing the influence of U and allowing I to carry on. As U reaches the limit thus imposed, its initial stratospheric values are iteratively modified…
THE CASE FOR THE CHURCH OF THE IMMACULATE INDUCTION
ABSTRACT: Recent political efforts to broaden the scope of science education and bring science into the mainstream have generated a great deal of controversy. One of the things that has been sorely missing is the relationship between mathematics and religion. Here we attempt to inject a greater mathematical essence into religion as well as explore one immediate implication, the Immaculate Induction Hypothesis. 1. INTRODUCTION: We focus on the injection of a greater mathematical sensibility within the religious community and examine the resulting implications. In doing so we agree that intelligent design is a valid viewpoint, but ask what this implies.…