Blogtrek

Media Ambiguity

Today CNN came out with an article entitled "Saudis: No Bases for Iraq Strike". CNN, that has two meanings! The Saudis could mean either. It depends on what "bases" is the plural of. If it is the plural of "base", it means that Saudi Arabia will not allow use of its territory for a US strike on Iraq. If it is the plural of "basis", then it means that the Saudis feel there that there are no reasons why the US should invade Iraq. Both sound reasonable, so CNN needs to reword its headline to tell which one is meant.

OK, so CNN took down that ambiguous headline from its web site. Then they come up with another ambigublooper just a few hours later! "Election 2002 hours away", screams the headline. Assuming the election begins on 2002 November 4/5 midnight, they are saying that right now is 2002 August 13 at 1400 hours, 2 in the afternoon. Obviously it is not. What they really mean is "Year 2002 Election hours away", meaning "Year 2002 Election is hours away". Let's hope most of their news is more recent than 2002 August 13.

Metaphors in mathematics

I attended a mathematics conference over the weekend. One of the more interesting talks I attended was one by Jennifer Bergner of Salisbury University, who illustrated by example the use of metaphors to illustrate mathematics. A math professor says, "Let P be a point". What are you thinking of? A point. Right. But what do you imagine when the professor says "point"? Most people, she finds, think of something that is round, like a circle or ball. Theoretically, a point is a one-element set, an infintesimally small extent at a specific point in a line or plane. But we don't think like that. We need to imagine something, so rather than imagining a tiny five-pointed star, or even a tiny square, we imagine a little filled-in circle. According to one book I read, indeed a circle is a fat point.

Here are some other metaphors that come to mind when I hear words:

bird - a passerine bird, such as a warbler (NOT a duck or an ostrich, in other words).
rodent - a mouse.
building - a moderately tall brick edifice
forest - a mid-latitude deciduous forest
vehicle - a minivan
car - a Toyota sedan

and so forth. This shows that we may think of general or abstract concepts by imagining something
that is concrete.