An IM transcript

I saw this on Tom's blog and IM'd it to Pat. Here's what happened:

PAT: but
SCOOTER: yeah, some further digging makes the % claim seem very doubtful.
SCOOTER: the conclusion about spellign is silly, too.
(editor's note: yes, the misspelling of "spellign" above was deliberate, and yes, i am lame.)
PAT: "fi" does not have its first and last letters in order
PAT: there are two kinds of misspellings on the page, i can't tell why
SCOOTER: what are the two types?
PAT: type one is you basicall typos "fi yuo cna raed"
PAT: type two, deliberate typos scrambling all but first and last letters: taht the frsit and lsat ltteer
PAT: note that 3 letter words are not scrambled in the long passage
PAT: nor are two letter words
PAT: conclusion: line one is by the blogger; everything else is pasted from a smarter source
SCOOTER: good call.
SCOOTER: also, the author's stated rules don't allow words less than 4 characters long to be misspelled.
SCOOTER: first and last have to stay the same.
SCOOTER: so, 2 letter words stay.
SCOOTER: 3 letter words, the first and last have to stay put, which means the middle one stays put, too.
SCOOTER: and there's only one possible permutation of four letter words, 1-3-2-4.
PAT: this isn't quite clog-worthy, but good times
PAT: we could be like psych! but for blogs
SCOOTER: i really really enjoy that show.
PAT: it gre on me, but it turns out it's better than Monk
PAT: grew
SCOOTER: my strange mind was able to read that word without your correction, thank you very much.
PAT: Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can say taht.
SCOOTER: Thanks, Cambridge!
SCOOTER: also, shouldn't there be something in that blog post about filling in words based on the words that came before and the words that came after, not just on the letters in the given word?
SCOOTER: lots of english words that start and end in the same letter share the same middle parts, too, just in different order.
PAT: that's good point, context is unaccounted for.
SCOOTER: i apologize for sending such a dumb link.
PAT: heh. good times
SCOOTER: mind if i turn this into a post of my own?
PAT: sounds good.
SCOOTER: whirred.
SCOOTER: warning: i might edit the IM's a little.
SCOOTER: you know, just to make me look smart and make you look stupid.
PAT: that's fair

Nullity and Nonsense

Pat found this article on the BBC site and passed it along to me. The story is about a professor of computer science at the University of Reading who thinks that by calling the result of dividing any number by zero "Nullity," he has solved a 1,200 year old math problem and fixed a programming problem that could kill people in one fell swoop. Addressing these claims in reverse order:

(A) Programmers have been using this solution for decades, and it was no big deal when it was developed in the first place -- they just called their solution "NaN" (Not a Number) instead of "Nullity."

(B) The professor's claim and the BBC's tone make it sound like naming "Nullity" is of a kind with building a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. With "Nullity," there was no problem to be solved, and a solution which simply renames an existing solution wouldn't be much of a breakthrough, anyway.

For a better explanation of the numerous problems with the BBC article in question, read this. And check out the comments on the original BBC article -- they go on and on, covering nearly every conceivable reaction: angry, funny, nasty, apologist, etc.

Pat didn't understand why dividing by zero was so problematic, so he IM'd me. I explained why (or tried to), and Pat turned our IM conversation into this post on the Clog.

The most notable part of the post, however, is in the setup preceding the IM transcript, where Pat introduces me as the Clog's Senior Math Nerd. My parents will be so proud.