At the local deli. What could have happened to make them put up that sign?? pic.twitter.com/7BzPNjFm1L
— Anna Haensch (@extremefriday) June 14, 2017
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Admittedly, the very thought of math usually puts me off food… and the professional mathematicians I know, while wonderful people, tend to be out towards the far end of the socialization bell curve… but what *could* precipitate such a stern message?
Corner Stone
Bit O Honey is pure evil. That’s the only calculation that can be arrived at. If you sell it, you should be charged and go to jail.
khead
“Democrats should vote for the AHCA. Because that’s what Tip and Ronnie would’ve wanted if they had been shot on the baseball field.”
You can laugh, but it’s coming. In some version. I can’t believe Doug hasn’t tweeted it already.
Also, Cole apparently deleted a pretty bad ass post. I’m guessing it’s to avoid bigfooting Anne. So, just know that’s coming too.
Fair Economist
Hmm – something like “Don’t Drink and Derive”?
dmsilev
Frightened away other, more normal, customers, I assume.
I know that both the American Mathematical Society and the American Physical Society are banned from holding conventions in Vegas for basically that reason; too many people doing odds calculations on the back of cocktail napkins and then loudly telling all of the other ca$ino patrons just how bad the odds were.
Baud
And this is why you don’t talk about Π except in quiet rooms.
schrodingers_cat
Is that a jibe at DougJ?
wmd
Mathematics needs to be normalized.
schrodingers_cat
@khead: Why do you guys care so much about what the Beltway Bots spout? Yes they are going to be in R corner, that’s not new or news.
amk
somethings just don’t add up.
Baud
@khead:
ABC has made him soft.
eclare
Open thread: last night an AARP ad to call Senator Corker about the AHCA aired during Colbert (saw it tonight on the DVR). Calling tomorrow on the AARP number…assume AARP would not buy the airtime if they did not have any hope. Or that is what I tell myself. And calling Alexander again, tomorrow.
elspi
What could it hurt they said, but one too many spectral sequence and this is where we are.
Spanky
@Fair Economist: Nice! (Claps)
eric
@Baud: um, phrasing?
stinger
Maybe someone mentioned that candy bars keep getting smaller and the price keeps going up, and then another customer started doing the math, and then somebody yelled at a cashier about it.
Corner Stone
@Baud: Why wouldn’t we want to talk about staples?
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
It could just be that one of the employees is a middle-aged adult returning to school and halfway through a required college algebra class. Said employee might be developing a facial tic and breaking out in a cold sweat at the thought of all things mathematical.
Never mind why I think this.
khead
@schrodingers_cat:
You think it’s not relevant or shouldn’t be ridiculed BEFORE it becomes conventional wisdom? Lol. Uh, ok.
Pubs are already looking to find ways to manipulate the shooting to the GOP advantage. See Ryan, Paul.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I am going to install the pie filter, until now I have never felt the need for it.
Spanky
Could be some discussion of inner products was upsetting some prude.
Aleta
Intentionally confusing the cashier when making change?
schrodingers_cat
@khead: Go ahead ridicule it.
JPL
@khead: Would Cole really put garbage in a plastic bag with animals in the house?
Mjaum
Management has gone mad(der), austeritized the cash-registers, and the help has to do the math in their head?
Morzer
I am guessing there was a complex emotional calculus going on.
manyakitty
@eric: Beat email to it!
M. Bouffant
Is the sign in a junk food store near some great institution of mathematics, w/ wild-eyed grad students everywhere?
cynthia ackerman
If this is a busines with a manual cash register, the notice is likely aimed at preventing clerks from making errors due to confusion from “discussing mathematics”. I saw this once years ago, possibly in response to scammers.
Lyrebird
@Fair Economist: Yeah I’d wonder if there’s a mathematician (with geometry interests) behind the counter & it’s just a joke about lines… which are at some level mathematical constructs.
Or maybe I’m totally off base (base what? mwah hah) and would be escorted out of that deli if I opened my mouth.
Ruckus
@schrodingers_cat:
It certainly does ease some of the stress of modern life, not having to read moronic bullshit. Of course if you wanted to eliminate all moronic bullshit in your life you’d never watch news or have an internet account. But being totally pig ignorant does have some drawbacks.
FlyingToaster
Yet another establishment the household of Chez Toaster would be banned from… But fortunately we live near enough to MIT/Harvard/Tufts/BU that no establishment which wanted to stay in business would post such a sign.
We do haikus and limericks in while standing line, as well as multiplication and statistics. HerrDoktor and WarriorGirl do puns, which is FAR more irritating than math.
Corner Stone
@FlyingToaster:
Are you the last in line?
Steve in the ATL
@eclare: I’m so old I can remember when Lamar Alexander was a decent man
Central Planning
My guess for the sign is because when people start talking about math problems, or silly math problems, or pointless math problems because they can (most of the math discussions/arguments in my house) they lose focus of why they are in line and don’t end up actually buying impulse items at the register.
FlyingToaster
@Corner Stone: That’s where we start. Inevitably.
JGabriel
Anne Laurie @ Top:
I’m gonna go with: a heated argument over Riemann’s Conjecture.
Steve in the ATL
@Lyrebird:
Based on what I’ve heard about the job market, there’s a decent chance that the cashier has a PhD in Mathematics
eclare
@Steve in the ATL: His signature is on my diploma from UT. Grrrr……
ETA> He was president at the time.
Morzer
Could the establishment be owned by Paul Ryan? I can see why he might be irked by mathematical discussions.
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
Off the math topic for a second — am I the only Hannibal fan who hears Richard Painter’s voice on MSNBC and can imagine him promising his sister she’ll have a Verger baby?
sm*t cl*de
The feelings of white supremacists and neo-nazis are too important to have them triggered by talk of ‘integration’.
Humdog
I don’t think the sign looks like a one off. Somewhere someone bought this sign from a stack of these signs, because maths in line causes problems everywhere.
Steve in the ATL
@eclare:
Yes, thank you for assuming I’m too stupid to understand that! I really need to overhaul my online persona….
sm*t cl*de
Mathematics conversations make people tensor.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL:
Or a JD.
Fair Economist
@Lyrebird: Now that you mention it, “line” is oddly capitalized. Trying to think of a joke…
(edit) Perhaps people were complaining the line was infinitely long?
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus: Cooley grads have to work somewhere!
eclare
@Steve in the ATL: It was for others who may not be in tune with TN education/politics (and why would they be?). He wasn’t really on the national stage at that point.
SFAW
@FlyingToaster:
It has been my experience that persons who hate puns either:
A) Don’t get them, or
B) Are frustrated because they can’t come up with any, or
D) Thought of a good one, JUST A MOMENT BEFORE someone else typed in the same one.
Not saying that YOU fall into any of those categories, of course.
FlyingToaster
@SFAW: I’m not the linguist; I don’t think on my feet the way that those two [peas in a fucking pod] do.
I fall into the second category.
schrodingers_cat
@Ruckus: So not wanting to read every comment makes one pig ignorant? I thinking filtering out the noise makes the signal sharper.
schrodingers_cat
@sm*t cl*de: Line integration can be hard even if you are not a white supremacist.
Morzer
@schrodingers_cat:
Them triangles is miscegenating again!
Anne Laurie
@schrodingers_cat:
I’ve never even met DougJ! But even among the hardcore geeks I’ve known since my college days (I don’t pretend to understand them, but we were Tolkien/Star Trek fans together before that was kewl) the pure mathematicians tend to be further out on the long tail of the bell curve than even the AI coders and rocket scientists…
Betsy
Maybe to keep small-time con artists from confusing the cashier. Apparently there’s a whole array of tricks that petty fraudsters use to try to confuse things while the cash drawer is open and the cashier is either taking bills out or making change, which requires either counting or keeping track of money in hand. Then the con is to claim that a larger bill was given in payment, or to try to do a second transaction on top of the first while the drawer is still open. I could imagine a scam that uses a shill standing in line to speak numbers loudly to confuse the transaction taking place at the register.
Morzer
@Anne Laurie:
DougJ is the Walrus, or possibly Bigfoot.
Lyrebird
@Steve in the ATL: Too true!
Lyrebird
@Fair Economist:
Thanks for that!
chopper
shouldn’t the sign refer to a line segment?
schrodingers_cat
@Anne Laurie: So there is no secret confab of FPers? or a retreat in Casa Cole? I am disappointed.
BTW I will send you an email with link to Mnem’s review this weekend she is going to review, Some like it Hot. And we have other summer attractions planned, including a couple of twin reviews, and I am going to do a post about it soon.
Morzer
@chopper:
Splitter!
Aleta
I would ban metamathematics.
schrodingers_cat
@Aleta: Really? You wouldn’t be talking across the intertoobz if not for math. Its the language of the physical universe.
efgoldman
@Baud:
About forty replies just went zipping thru my evil brain, but I think I’m going to just let that lie there, quivering in fear.
efgoldman
@schrodingers_cat:
The pie filter or the pi filter?
efgoldman
@FlyingToaster:
Wait! BU has maths? [/alumnus]
Uncle Cosmo
@dmsilev: The only time I was ever in Lost Wagers I stumbled downstairs after a plentiful (& extremely cheap) breakfast to find myself amongst the blackjack tables. I watched 3 guys at one table for a few hands.
“Plenty of room,” one of them said, “why don’t you join us?”
“Don’t think the house wants me playing.”
“Why not?” the dealer asked.
“Because of what I do for a living.”
“And what’s that?”
“Statistics.”
“You’re right,” the dealer said. “But you’re free to watch – so long as you don’t say anything.”
Truth is, I couldn’t count cards to save my soul. But that didn’t matter.
Corner Stone
@Uncle Cosmo: You mean the house was worried about you watching for 1000+ hours?
Uncle Cosmo
@JGabriel: Maybe they could talk about the decline of computer generated electronic music. I refer, of course, to Format’s Last Theremin… =;^p
(@FlyingToaster: See above.)
LongHairedWeirdo
I know nothing of forbidding mathematics – but I can think of a reason for that.
“Oh, come on, man, don’t buy that four-pack of Almond Joys; you can get 2 regular cheaper!””
“Sure, the 20oz bottles are bigger but the price per ounce shoots up”
“See, these caffeinated chocolates are far cheaper than that 5 hour energy drink, which is mostly just caffeine anyway.”
“”Hold on… a six pack is actually cheaper than those two jumbo cans of beer!””
(When I came to Washington, and first saw caffeinated chocolates, I was pleased, but also horrified that these hadn’t existed in Ohio.)
Uncle Cosmo
@efgoldman: Coworker many moons ago brought in a coffee (not covfefe) mug with the legend YOU TURN MY SOFTWARE INTO HARDWARE. I glanced at it & said, At your age, firmware is the best you can hope for…
Uncle Cosmo
@efgoldman: Reminds me of the cheering section at MIT sporting events:
SECANT! TANGENT! COSINE! SINE!
THREE POINT ONE FOUR ONE FIVE NINE!
Shalimar
@schrodingers_cat: Based on Doug ripping Adam last month for sending an email to FPers about being sensitive to provoking potentially suicidal readers, if there was a secret confab, everyone would leave DougJ out of it.
Uncle Cosmo
@Corner Stone: The Laws of Large Numbers sound like impending doooooom when your staff has trouble counting past ten with shoes on.
Aleta
@schrodingers_cat: math yes. (I have a physics degree too. I love the beauty of its math.) I just don’t like metaresearch.
SFAW
@Uncle Cosmo:
Um, it’s actually “Cosine secant tangent sine,” but we’ll let you slide … rule?
ETA: And by “MIT sporting events,” do you mean tiddly-wink matches? I don’t think Math Team qualifies as “sporting.”
sm*t cl*de
Back in an earlier career in quantum physics, I sometimes had cause to apply Degenerate Perturbation analysis. It is not as much fun as it sounds.
SFAW
@Uncle Cosmo:
Outstanding!
Jacel
@Betsy: Yes this is a thing, and probably the reason for the sign. You described this better than I was going to. But even when done innocently, the overheard number conversations can disrupt a cashier’s accuracy.