After a second read-through, it sounded like the finale was going to be on the 21st. Basically, it mentioned the new shows would be pushed back to the week of the 28th, due to the final airing of TAR, on the week of the 21st, which is supposed to be the "traditional" fall season starting point.

Thanks mel42024, and thanks again, theschnauzers!

mel42024, that link says September 21st, not the 28th.

waaaaaah!!!! I have a meeting again tomorrow night!!! Booooooooooo

On a lighter and much happier note, my b/f has decided that, although he'd like me to be suprised by my ring, he needs my input so guess what we've been doing the last few days?!???!!! I'm so excited!!!!!

Suga Wuga



Ooooh--permutations!

I think that the formula you're looking for is

7!/(4!*3!) = 35

If you need to enumarate all of them (I did it just to check myself), you can list all of the AAAA*** combinations (1 of them), then all of the AAAB*** combinations (3 of them), then AAB****, etc.

If you need to generalize the formula, here's what my stat book says:



I could make it look a lot prettier if the forums supported equation editor, but hopefully that makes sense. Good luck!

I believe it involves factorials.

n! / [(a!)(b!)] = 35 unique combinations

n = total number of letters = 7
a = number of letter As = 4
b = number of letter Bs = 3

n! indicates a factorial n! = n*(n-1)*(n-2)*(n-?)...(1)

In this case 7(6)(5)(4)(3)(2)(1) / [(4)(3)(2)(1)*(3)(2)(1)] = 5040 / [24 * 6] = 5050 / 144 = 35

A good explanation.


Ah, beaten to it!

Excellent news labral!

Oh, dear lord.

[head exploding]Math is just not what I need on a Monday, or any other day of the week ending with "day"![/head exploding]

So it turns out that I can't read. Thanks for correcting me. It does make me feel better to know that I could have explained the answer to Suga Wuga's question had I been here five minutes earlier. No, I swear, I can! I might not have passed reading comprehension, but I did do well in geometry and discrete mathematics.

Discrete mathematics -- is that the type you don't discuss in mixed company? :-)

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Why yes, I am a math nerd. And kind of a word nerd too.

Math kudzu! It's everywhere!

I had a totally math-free day yesterday, because we went to the Bristol Renaissance Faire and I bought some new garb to wear.

Oh, wait, there was some math involved. Anyway, it was a nice day for flouncing around in costume. At one point when we were trying to find something to eat, it seemed more like a route-finding task, except in ersatz Renaissance peasantwear.

THANK YOU!

Now I have proof that I don't know the right answer yet. As sucky as that is, it helps. I have 22 answers so far, but knowing that there are more will make me think. All. Night. Long.

The funny thing is that I have a degree in engineering. But I only took probability and statistics for about 3 weeks in the 11th grade. I'm not even taking it now...I was just looking at a friend's assignment and got curious.

I give due deference to the math geeks. May you live long and prosper.

That reminds me...bringing back the old topic of baby names...I found out last night that BF and I may have some issues in the future. He wants to name his future daughter Entara (sp?). That sounds like a Star Trek character. Just no. Dream Scrabble proposal be damned. Just..ugh.

Entara? That sounds like some sort of animal from Greek Mythology!

Or... enterology. Not a happy baby name at all.

Sounds like something off Bewitched. Again, definitely not good.

Umm... I think a very serious talk is called for Suga Wuga. Eek.

Btw: Yes, it is my day off, and well anything is practially better then doing my laundry and cooking my chicken for the week, so...not so long story short, I think I have the 35 permutations. I used matrixes to come up with them. Sad, I know.

I also downloaded and registered Snood, now I can't stop playing.

Yeah, I play Zuma too. But my eye can't track fast enough to keep up when it gets fast. I started playing Snood on the computer at work in '98. (Well, someone else had installed it and who am I to argue a cool timewaster.) Haven't been near it in a while and then someone had to have it on their computer and let me play again the rotten little twinks.

If you think Snood is addicting, try Zuma. I ended up downloading that last month and have been playing it incessantly ever since. I actually managed to win the stupid thing last night, but nobody was around to show the really neat bonus level to, so now I have to do it again. Sheesh.

Entara?! Yeesh. Sounds like the new 2005 Nissan model.

If you need any more help, Suga, I'll kick it to MAMom. She's a math teacher, and it would take her mind off her foot.

You can win Zuma?! Wow, congrats Mama Tiger. That's so cool.

I'd have woken somebody up. Hee. (No really, I probably would have. Or taken a picture, I actually did that in my Mario Bros. addicted youth. )

I'm now off to investigate Snood...

How?

What level do you need to get to?

When you get through Level 9, which has, I believe, 7 separate sub-levels, each successively more evil than the last, you then receive the charming bonus of three more levels. Until last night I had never made it through level 12-7, but when I got through that, I learned that there's a level 13, which contains only one sub-level, but possibly the most evil of the bunch -- there's no outlined track, the balls just trail around in space. Plus it's really, really long and there are some nasty wicked angles in the track that make it almost impossible to shoot at anything about half the time. But once you finish that, the credits roll.

So altogether, 12 full levels and the bonus level 13. Nearly four hours' worth of game. Between that and TWOP, it's a wonder I find time to eat, sleep, or work!

Holy Crap.

I thought I was good the first time I got to Level 4-4. (Not through, mind you. Just to. Colour me in awe.

Stick to it and you, too, can find yourself stuck at level 5-4 for a month. And then at 8-4 (the same level, only faster and longer) again. And then at 11-4....and we won't even talk about 9-7! That's the one that still almost always takes me several tries.

The most useful tricks I discovered were (1) the ball in the frog's back is the next one coming up, so you can see what's next; (2) when you have a gap, shoot a ball of the color of the last ball in the lead string at the leading edge of the back string, so the lead string rolls back to close the gap; and (3) whenever you can, rather than right-clicking to switch to a different colored ball, just shoot the wrong-colored one off into the middle of nowhere. It's faster and easier that way. Plus I start off at level 1-1 every time so I can accumulate lots of extra lives.

That, and wasting a lot of time practicing. Doesn't it show?

Heh. I believe I made it to level 4-1 once.

Sigh. Is anything major going on in NYC the week of the 21st? I looked at hotels on the off chance that is the finale date and there seems to be a dearth of rooms. There are of course many rooms, just not at the hotels I was looking at.

Wow, thanks for that update, Rabrab! I'm need to pay more attention to the theater listings around here from now on.

Thanks for the tips on Zuma, MamaTiger! I love that game, but I only play the online free version. What is Snood?

Hee! Kevin posted this handy text-to-voice linkover on the Questions thread. There are several choices for speakers, such as American English, British English, French, German, etc. Type in any text and choose a speaker. Endless linguistic hijinks ensue.

My personal favorite so far: "voulez vouz couchez avec mois" sounds good from the French speakers...however, "you dirty rat, you killed my brother" sounds like James Cagney Night at an airport karaoke bar.

Oh, that link looks to be fun. All of the non-English speakers mangle "Have you seen a dwarf running with a dead cow on her back?"

And Happy TARSday to all!

There is one just up the road by the river. So far the group I've been hanging out with has been there every night. It's funny - the first four people that I met in the program are all from DC.

Snood is just another addictive game. Check it out for yourself -- it's got a free version or you can pay a few $$ and waste your life on it like some of us did coughcough.

Mama Tiger, that right there? Is just as mind-boggling to me as the stats stuff. I'm sure it would make much more sense if I played the game, but if I do, I fear I may never have little Endora...I mean, Entara. Because I will have no time for silly things like friends and family. I must know my limitations and defer to them, acknowledging that I am prone to obsession.

That voice link? Hee. If I had some headphones here at work, it would be so much better. As it is, making it say Dave Chappelle quotes in a British accent may not be office appropriate, but it's very funny.

Aw, warm wishes to MAMom. The wonderful posters here have done a great job of explaining that question. I hope she feels better soon.

If anyone really wants to see the question that used to be here, send me an e-mail.

There's usually something major going on in NYC every week, but if I had to take an educated guess, I'd say it might be Fashion Week. I believe the giant U.N. Fall meeting isn't until early October.

confession time: I skipped all those math posts

I skipped them too, iMissEthan. Ow. After spending three frantic days house-cleaning in preparation for our homestudy visit tonight, math is the last thing I need.

I think it's a good omen we are meeting with our social worker on TARSdays for the next three weeks. Right?

Hee! I glossed over them too. Math makes my brain hurt. I really did attempt to read them but even as my eyes passed over the words, it was like reading a foreign language. Numbers just make no sense to me. Math is the only class I ever failed in my entire life. I finished with a whopping 27%. And I distinctly remember answering only 1 question on the final exam. And I got it wrong.

M. Darcy, I bet that riverside pub is the Head of the River - it was close to where we stayed, so we ate there at least once. We didn't find the Turf Tavern on this trip - I know I got there on my first-ever trip, but to find it you need a good map and to have no qualms ducking down what looks like a narrow passageway that twists and turns between buildings.

Ah, a kindred spirit. After barely (and I do mean barely) passing basic algebra in 10th grade, I decided I had enough of math. It must be a left brain/right brain thing because I always pulled A's in English, history, geography, etc., but with math and science courses it would be a cause for celebration if I got a C (I flunked college biology...twice). Yet today I write science reports and articles for a living. Heh.

If not for a smarter friend who I was always sure to sit next to (ironically, she's the one who has inspired me to try this stuff out), I would have failed Mr. Irving's Algebra 2/Trig class in the 10th grade. I took an odd honors math class the following year (my mother must've made me or something), but since my partner in crime wasn't there to help me, I didn't do so well. No math at all my senior year. I thought I was going to a liberal arts school, but nooooo.

My Calc 1 teacher in college was the one who gave "everyone" an A. I got a C-. I really don't know how I got through Differential Equations...or graduated for that matter.

edited because words make reading that much easier

I always loved math, but my junior year in high school I had a truly loathesome teacher. I walked into trig the next year, saw him, walked out, and dropped the class. I then took hard science courses for my math requirement in college (it was really a math and/or hard science requirement), and took a fabulous statistics class for fun when I was two years out of school. Part of me would love to get back into it, but the fear is always that in order to get up to speed I'd have to repeat a class or two before getting into new material, and I don't want to do that.

I loved math too, even through some crappy teachers, one of whom wouldn't pronounce my name correctly (actually, one in 7th grade did that) and one who thought I didn't act lady-like and thus punished me with her recommendation. But the good teachers made all the difference. I wasn't in the genius category (the kids who entered Westinghouse & took MV calc by junior year) but I was up there. I actually thought of minoring in it at college, which would have been great since it is not a female-heavy field, but held off signing up because my AP scores weren't in when I signed up for classes over the summer and I didn't feel like changing my schedule. Then when the scores came in, I was tested out of the math requirements with a 5 and then never made room for it second semester. How I remember all of those details but can't remember other really, really, really important things is beyond me.

The older you get, the more room in your brain is occupied by useless trivial or random crap from your distant past, the more distant the better.

I recognize the words as English, but they make no sense to me ...

skagirl77, what is the MV in "MV calc"? Oh. Now that I typed it, I'm thinking "multi-variable". Is that right?

My 8th grade History teacher called me "Gladys". All. The. Time. I hated it. Everyone laughed. And she said it more like "Glaaaaaaaadisssss".

I'd still choose Gladys over Entara though.

I hated math from first to sixth grade bacause I didn't understand it (aside from long division, which I understood just fine but hated because it was boring). My main problem was with fractions and decimals -- I could never understand how 1/4 and 4/16 and 0.25 were the same. It didn't help that their examples often involved fruit; to me 1/4 was a quarter of an apple (a big chunk), 4/16 was four very skinny but still distinct slices, and 0.25 of an apple was the whole thing made into applesauce and a quarter of that sectioned off. You clearly can't do the same things with them -- applesauce goes well on pancakes, but the big chunk would just squash them, and the skinny slices work well in a cobbler but neither of the others do -- so why should you be able to do the same things with all the mathematical ones? Needless to say, as a fourth-grader I couldn't articulate this distinction (dyslexia on top of poor math skills) and so I just got more lectures on fruit.

Then I switched schools between fifth and sixth grade, which had the effect of making me repeat fifth-grade math, because they were on a different track. Apparently that did the trick, because from seventh to twelfth grade I survived honors math and did well enough on the AP test to skip a semester of college math. I can't think of a single concept I had trouble with in all those years and in fact would often be able to pull answers out of the air without even thinking.

... and then I hit college. While the first two semesters were okay (really just logical extensions of high school calculus, and my experience reading topographical maps, of all things, came in handy), after that nothing seemed to make much sense. I slogged through two more semesters and threw in the towel. My junior year was happily math-free. Then spring semester of my senior year, I realized I needed one more math class to graduate. And, oddly enough, I actually understood and liked it.

So, uh, the point of this whole long story: I like math. I think. At least, I like it now. Who, me? Capricious? Nah.

My other point? Anyone who has a grade school kid who hates math? Please let them know there is more to math than basic arithmetic. Oddly enough, when the emphasis wasn't on the addition, division, etc, I did much better at it. There is hope, and things just might get better.

I like math and physics, and they are definitely my strong points, but I don't really mind english and history courses that much. My first year at university involves Calculus, Statistics, Algebra, Physics, English and Psychology.

Speaking of addicting games, I had played Chip's Challenge on my old computer and I had made it to Level 136. Then we had to send the computer away to get fixed and when it was returned, the Best of Entertainment package was gone. I nearly cried.

I can do Math, but I don't understand what I'm doing much of the time. As far as I'm concerned, it's pattern recognition; "The last time I saw something that looked like this, I did thus and so, and got the answer. So I'll do thus and so again, and see if it works." Which was fine in Algebra, and Geometry, not so good in Advanced Alegebra, and very little use in Trig and Pre-Calc. I passed Trig because the teacher had never had to fail a senior yet in twenty-something years of teaching and he wasn't about to let me ruin his record. He's the one who figured out that I was matching patterns, and he spent a lot of time on drills with me before every test, so that I would recognize what I saw. I still didn't understand what I was doing, though, and I think that really hurt him. He was an excellent teacher, and loved math. He hated to see anyone struggling with it, because to him it was beautiful, and elegant, and simple.

mel I've still got Chip's Challenge (in fact I've got the whole BoWEP package) You want it? I can try to zip it up and send it to you.

Suga Wuga - I would guess MV is multi-variable.

I'm no genius - I didn't take third year (MV) calculus until my senior year of high school. And that was the last math class I have ever taken, though I really enjoy physics and math. I didn't ask for it, my school decided to try an "experiment" on HG 6th graders the exact year I happened to be in it.

"Do students really need pre-Algebra?" they pondered.

And then they took my whole class and gave us one quarter of pre-Algebra at the end of 6th Grade and skipped us to Algebra I in 7th grade. 8th grade was Geometry, then Algebra II, then Pre-Calculus. That meant 11th grade was Calculus - your choice AB or BC (basically, AB is first semester calculus stretched over the whole year and BC is two semesters of calculus in two semesters).

My mom's a math teacher and I was leaning toward engineering at the time. I took BC. But that was the last math offered by the school system. However, that meant I only had three math credits for high school because geometry was in middle school. In NC you had to have 4 math credits to graduate. So I had to go to Wake Forest to take MV Calc 4 days a week during 1st semester so that I could graduate.

Here is the super bad part - I made a B. But that counted as a "regular class" toward my weighted GPA, so it was like all of the other AP dorks making a "D" for the year in a class (unheard of!). My class rank dropped like a stone to be not only not in the top ten, but not in the top 10 %. My dad cried because I was the first person in the family to not be an "Honor Graduate". Which was funny, because I was a National Merit Finalist (and there were way less than 10 of us at my school, I'll just say), but couldn't be a West Forsyth Honor Graduate.

And then I decided to major in Journalism instead of Engineering, anyway, and it was all for naught. Heh!

ETA:

skagirlOne girl finished is sophomore year - we had some serious brainiacs at my school.

In my 8th grade Geometry class we had a 5th grader come over every day from the elementary school next door. He was taking Algebra II the same year, I hear. That would put him online to finish MV by 8th grade. Yikes! Those people drive me nuts.

Yes, meant Multi-Variable. One girl finished is sophomore year - we had some serious brainiacs at my school.

I leave the country for a few days and you guys start talking about math. Sigh. I just can't leave the States any more.

RabRab, that would be great, if it's not too much of a hassle for you.

Ack, we didn't do any Calculus until the 12th grade, or not calculus as I know it. Slopes started in the ninth grade. In 8th grade at my school, the kids who weren't very good at math did 7th grade work. When I got to high school, I found out that another school gave the eighth-graders that were good at math the ninth grade curriculum, so some of them started off high school already having a credit, which I would have enjoyed. It seemed kind of unfair, but I didn't even know you could do stuff like that.

ETA: Be very afraid, M. Darcy. Next on our agenda is relativistic momentum. Muahahaha!

That's right. Without you around we had to do something to bring up our "smart quotient", and we thought that lively discussions on combinations, permutations, and multi-variable calculus would do it! Hee!

Go female engineers!

[chirp chirp chirp]

Ah well. There are a few of us around! Yeah I did the whole math thing, loved it, all that fun stuff. Rabrab, it is pretty much pattern recognition, math and many engineering classes. It isn't till you get to the more advanced stuff (sometimes not till grad school) when you learn the real background to what's going on, where the equations come from. But, engineers tend to not care why something ultimately works - we're more concerned with the hows. Scientists are the ones focused on the whys.

My college experience was pretty opposite from many of you - I only had 1 (on average) non-engineering course per semester. So that included everything from history to writing to theater workshop to not having any liberal arts course at all. Let's just say I wasn't very balanced...