In part 6 of this series, I introduced an operation called inner product between two vectors, as a way to find the total price of an order using a price list.  In this post, I want to give a bunch of other examples where the same pattern shows up.

But before I do so, I want to ‘fess up’ to something.  It’s the kind of thing that irritates me when I see others do it.  I did something that didn’t make any particular sense in the context in which I used it – it only makes sense in a future setting, in this case a setting that is several posts away.  We do this in math class all the time: we put the motivation into the future “some day this will all make sense.  You need this because of the 9th grade test, or because of graduate school.”  Instead, I think it is really important that the math makes sense now, always now, not in the future.
Truth is that my displaying the vector inner product using one horizontal vector and one vertical vector was not something that was particularly appropriate in the problem setting that I used.  It may have gotten in the way somewhat.  So let me correct that here and use a representation that is appropriate to the situation at hand.

Instead of this representation:

it would be more natural to use a representation like this (which more closely matches many order forms you may see):

This representation matches more clearly how most of us would think about an order being priced. The two starting vectors(the order vector and the price vector) can be seen in this arrangement, though they are a bit indistinct.  If you’d feel better if the blank entries are replaced by zeros, you are welcome to do it that way:

OK – now on to other examples of inner products.

Weighted Average – One that most teachers are familiar with is that of computing an average score based on a series of tests, each with its own weight.  So let’s say there was a test in September, and one in October, and one in November, and a final in December.  Let’s say the scores on each are in the range from 0 to 100, and that the final is supposed to count twice as heavily as the other tests.

The weights vector would be:

The weight vector is the same for all students, and is independent of the scores.

A particular student would have a set of scores.  Let’s assume Jesse’s scores are like this:

The final score for Jesse would be the inner product of his score vector and the weights vector:
60 × .20 + 70 × .20 + 50 × .20 + 100 × .40 = 12 + 14 + 10 + 40 = 76.

(This matches the result you’d get if you took the average of 60, 70, 50, 100, 100 where you’d repeat the December score twice.  That’s another way to give the December score double the weight of the others.  60 + 70 + 50 + 100 + 100 = 380, and if you divide that by 5 – which is the number of scores added together – you get the same 76.)

Total Calories – Just like we can price an order by computing the inner product of the order vector with a price vector, we can get the total calories of an order by computing the inner product of the order vector with a calorie vector.

Number of Cups – We can keep track of inventory through inner products, too.  A store will typically want to replace the inventory that’s been sold, and for that it wants to keep track of the total amount sold.  This is probably most useful  when done for a particular period, like a day.  To keep the example simple, let’s assume we’re keeping track for each single order (and then add these up for all orders in a day).  The store would want to keep track of the number of hamburger patties used up, the number of slices of pickle used, etc.  In this example, we’ll keep track of the number of cups used for a particular order.  Again, this can be done by taking the inner product of the order vector with the following vector:

which we might name the “cup vector”.  You can verify for yourself that the inner product of our example order

with the cup vector would yield 3 cups.  For (3×1 cup) + (1×0 cups) + (5×0 cups) + (2×0 cups) = 3 cups.

We’ll see more examples of inner products later, including geometric examples.  I think we’ve got enough here to gives us a natural introduction to a new topic in the next post: we are going to introduce matrices.

I wonder how people vacationed before cameras.

by Eli Altman

Have you ever seen the Not For Tourists (NFT) city guides? They’re a great example of a smart name with a brand strategy baked in. The angle here is exclusivity. Let’s pretend we’re looking for a guide to New York. In most guide books, you’d expect to read about the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, the Waldorf Astoria—places like that. With a name like Not For Tourists, you expect to be let in on all of New York’s little secrets.

NFT works on a few levels. If you take the name literally, it’s a guide for people who actually live in New York. I don’t imagine that too many New Yorkers would whip out a guide book in public, but maybe it’s a great reference if you’re new to the city. I was given NFT Los Angeles when I went there for school.

If you are a tourist and happen to get your hands on one of these guides, you’re probably looking for a different travel experience. Not everyone who travels likes tour buses, gift shops and observation decks. Some people love to travel, but hate being tourists. If that sounds like you (it sounds like me), buying a Not For Tourists guide seems way less painful than picking up Let’s Go! New York.

“Naming is a necessity for order, but naming can not order all things. Naming often makes things impersonal, so we should know when naming should end. Knowing when to stop naming, you can avoid the pitfall it brings.” – Tao Te Ching

We often underestimate the power of names and naming. Both from the perspective of the person who carries the name and the person who calls upon and summons that name.

I’ve been called by many different names: Tall-boy, Fat-man, Gym-boy, Tex-Avery, Bull-dog, Starboy, Boss, Baller, Hops, Tricycle, Baje, Papi, and the list goes on. This is typical in African culture and is very much shared in the Caribbean’s and North America’s African diaspora. I grew up hearing names such as Short-man, Red-man, Tall-man, Skinny, Tubba, Tite-tus, John-O, Suga-foot, Frazz-man. All of them to describe a person in relation to an event or situation, usually one filled with humour for the onlookers and embarrassment for individual.

It’s very rare to find names of upliftment within this paradigm of naming. I don’t know if it’s because these names are now coming from a down trodden people that have been formerly oppressed and still to a degree informally so. The journey continues for justice and true liberation and self-determinism, and this journey mirrors our spiritual quest for liberating our divine selves. ‘Jah Rastafari’ is one of many outcries for this freedom and re-connection to our God. Let us not be trapped by a sentiment of judgement toward different spiritual and religious expressions (expressions of an infinite God), but let us focus on what is very clear and present – the power of naming and the continuation of the revolutionary spirit through this practice. It is the spirit that gives birth to the ‘I and I” and a ‘I-Jah’ to give a couple of examples. It is here that we find upliftment of a people and a community through naming and titles such as Queen and King, Empress and Divine Goddess; a process that started way back in the early 1900’s by Marcus Garvey and his United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).

Many people of the African diaspora have reclaimed their African names, a thing seen by many as backward and only performed by confused individuals. It is the view of those who do not understand the psychological effects of a name and naming things. It connects to our self-esteem and spiritual identity.

Our African ancestors understood a name to be part of our soul and spirit.

Indeed, naming is a necessity to bring about order and control. In Alex Haley’s watershed of a movie, ‘Roots’, this could be made no clearer when a ’slave’ owner beat a European name into the psyche of an enslaved African man, Kunta Kinte. To forget our former selves is to possess a new name. To carry or hold many names is to understand we have many sides to our existence. Nothing is wrong with people of African ancestry (especially in the diaspora) carrying a European name, but it should not be to the death of their African identity. And so many of us, but still not enough to restore balance, have reclaimed part of our African heritage through an African name.

“Let us define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves instead of being defined, named, created for, and spoken for by others”, is the call to action by the author of Awaken the Mind: Communion with Sean Liburd, and he articulately continues with, “Our memories are fragmented from being traumatized for hundreds of years. It is now our duty to recover these memories and get to know ourselves. African people must commit themselves to acknowledging and celebrating their strong cultural heritage, giving our children names that reflect us, developing our own business, and determining our value in this society.”

These statements will always hold true for a people who have lost their cultural and spiritual identity. And it is not limited to the African people. Many people around the world have been oppressed in some shape or form, whether it be by military invading forces, by political systems, or by religious dogma.

In the spirit of revolution, we must understand that our success comes not only through uncovering our personal self-image but also how accurate that self-image is seen by others. This is the power of names and naming; to provide a means of aligning society’s held perspective of who we are, with our true self-image.

Names have sound and sound is a form of energy. Sound energy in a realm bound by time, such as this, results in a form of power. A fact unknown to many, albeit too true. God spoke the world into existence according to the author of the biblical Genesis. “In the beginning was the word, and the was with God, and the word was God.”

But there is also a part of us that should not be named and rightly cannot be named. It is the divine us. As God told Moses, “I am that I am.” We must realize this too applies to the things made in the image and likeness of God… and that we are.

And so we should also know when naming should end. Knowing when to stop naming, you can avoid the pitfall it brings. That is to lean on human intellect rather than on divine intellect, wisdom and intuition. To try to define and control everything is a hindrance to our spiritual progress and life journey. We eventually come to understand that for the logical nature of our being, some things must remain hidden.

Never get between a cyborg and his author's daughter.

Google has filed a trademark for the product name “Nexus One” for its upcoming smartphone release. Some think this name stems from the moniker given by Philip K. Dick to the cyborgs in his book “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” Many people know the story of the Nexus-6 cyborgs from the dystopian film “Blade Runner,” based on Dick’s novel. The daughter of the late author is upset by the rumors, and insists that Google never contacted her to arrange for licensing permission.

In another naming controversy, a small design company named Bing! Information Design is suing Microsoft, with the claim that the software company’s search engine is infringing on their trademark.

It isn’t often that the success of one product inspires a company to change its name to the product name. JS-Kit, the makers of the popular commenting web application Echo, has decided to rebrand the company, changing its name to Echo in the process.

Another name change occurred recently, when Wollemi Mining Corporation became Pacific Bepure Industry Inc. Oddly, neither name reflects the company’s business very well: the designing, manufacturing, and selling of moderately priced shoes for women.

A recent study of British dairies revealed that cows with names make more milk, approximately 258 liters more. Popular names include family names as well as herb and flower names. Of course, the correlation doesn’t exist in the name alone. The practice of naming, be it a cow or a company or a new product, is a kind of devotion. A little love goes a long way.

In this series on vectors we showed vector addition in this post, and then took a small excursion to show a surprising connection between some vector additions and the distributive property.

In  this post, I will combine vectors with look-up tables and thus introduce an operation usually called inner product.  For this, we will take as our starting point the drive-up window order from a previous post:

The box above represents the order, and we have been assuming that this order is specific enough that the fast food folks can get you what you want.  Specifically, that there is an understanding of what an order of “coke” is as compared to, say, “coke, small”, or “diet coke, large”.

Yet serving up your order is not the only concern of the fast food place.  They need to get paid.  They charge you for the items ordered, based on a price list.  (And then, in the USA and some other countries, they compute taxes on top of the total; in yet other countries, the taxes would already be included in the prices shown on the price list.  In this post, I’ll ignore taxes altogether.)

The price list can also be shown as a vector.  It might look like this:

The price list will typically contain many items that weren’t ordered.   Typically, there is an entry in the price list for any item ordered.

To find the total amount (ignoring taxes), it is pretty clear what needs to be done: for each item ordered, you multiply the amount ordered by the price found from the price list vector, and then you add it all up.

The $15.10 comes from coke (3 times $1.20) plus cheeseburger (1 times $1.50) plus hamburger (5 times $1.40) plus fries (2 times 1.50).

The operation on the order vector and the price list vector that gives us the final price (ignoring taxes) is called inner product.  I don’t want to go into the significance or the origin of the name (though you would correctly guess that there is also something called an outer product.)  Inner product is also often called the dot product.

You may have noticed that the situation shown is not symmetric with respect to the two vectors.  Yet there are ways to make the similarity between the two vectors more pronounced.  One way to do that is to ignore the parts of the price list that aren’t being called upon.  We can also reorder the entries to match those of the order.  Doing so might give us something like this:

Alternatively, we could expand the order to match the price list, by explicitly  marking zeros for those items on the menu that aren’t ordered.  This is something we may show later.

For now, I will note that textbooks sometimes show this inner product as follows:

where the information that gives us the meaning of the 15.10 is left out, but at least the distinction between the two operands of the operation is maintained.  But since the process of multiplying and adding is itself commutative, there are many textbooks that dispense with the different treatment of the two operands altogether and write the thing as (3,1,5,2) • (1.20,1.50,1.40,1.50) = 15.10 and treat it as a completely symmetric operation: (1.20,1.50,1.40,1.50) • (3,1,5,2) = 15.10.  I will come back to these more subtle points in a later post.  What I hope I have achieved in this post is that you see how the scenario of an order – written as a vector – combined with a price list – also written as a vector – naturally leads to a process that gives us a single number, and that this process matches what textbooks call inner product.

Part 1, part 2, and part 3 of this series looked at a particular model for vector algebra, based on some simple notions such as that of a shopping list.

In this post, I want to play with vector addition and look at the nature of that operation when expressed using the notation developed in the last post.

For a starting point, let’s look at two of your recent gas station receipts:

- and -

and think about what it would mean to add these up.  The most obvious part of this might be to add up the amounts: $27.84 + $23.49 = $51.33.  What does the amount $51.33 represent?  It represents the total amount of money you paid to the gas station people for gas, in these two trips to the gas station.

We could also look to see how much gas the $51.33 paid for.  We got 9.6 gallons on the first trip, and 8.1 gallons on the second trip, for a total of 17.7 gallons.  We can represent the result of our work as follows:

and we can consider this our first example of vector addition.  You add the gallons, you add the dollars, and get a new vector, and this new vector still represents what got paid for how much gas – however, this time not through a single purchase, but two purchases combined.

Let’s look at another situation, one where we will look at coins.  Let’s assume that in the ashtray of my car I’ve got the following coins:

and in my coin purse I’ve got:

and I move all the coins from the ashtray into my coin purse.  What is in my coin purse now?

There is not a lot of overlap between the two: the only kind of coin present in both the ashtray and the coin purse is nickels.  The other coins only occur in one or in the other.  Keeping track of what will be in the ocin purse after joining them together is relatively simple.  One way to write the result is:

and you might note that this is a very different answer from $1.52, which is an answer to a very different question: “what is the value of what is in my coin purse?”

Combining two piles of coins, and keeping track of the total number of each type of coin, that’s a perfect example of vector addition.  (If you’re a math teacher, you might object that my last example isn’t really an example of vector addition, but rather of “adding like terms”.  In response, I’d say that “adding like terms” is a special case of vector addition, and that it is too bad that we usually treat them as completely different and unrelated things.)

Thinking of vectors as piles of stuff where we keep track of what the stuff is and how many of each of the stuff is there – this leads naturally to thinking of vector addition as combining two piles of stuff into a single pile, and continue to keep track of what is there and how many of each are there.

With finals week finally coming to a close, I can’t help pondering the memorization abilities of the college student species. An entire semester’s worth of information is crammed in the brain until that glorious moment when the exam paper is handed from student to teacher, like the passing of an Olympic torch. This is all accomplished during the duration of one week or less, and multiplied by five or six classes–all within that same week. How is so much information sorted and retained in such a short period of time?

To address this question, I thought about how other information is memorized by the college student species. Specifically, I reflected upon the praxis of name memorization. Every day, college students meet at least one new person–a classmate who needs to borrow a pen, a peer sharing your table in the overcrowded dining hall, a housemate’s cute friend she brought home… We constantly pass new faces, and are constantly bombarded with new names to match those faces–names which we are expected to remember. (After all, how else can we look them up to add on Facebook)? Sorting and retaining all these names can be challenging, especially when these new faces are only encountered occassionally: that is when the art of memorizing names comes in.

Personally, I have this terrible habit of making nicknames for new people I meet based on my initial impressions of them. I’ll be conversing with some new person and miss the “My name is ________” part because my brain is too busy thinking something like “Wow, this girl’s fake tan has an impressively orange pigment. She looks like she’s borderline legal midget too…makes me feel 6′. Shit, what did she just say her name is? Katie? No, no–You’re only thinking that because her phone just rang with a Katy Perry ringtone. Man, I guess I’ll just call her Ooompa Loompa Girl…” (Of course, these nicknames are never used to vocally address the person to his or her face).

So, the nickname is remembered due to the blatant association (e.g. “Ooompa Loompa Girl” matches an incredibly short girl with incredibly orange skin).  However, the actual name is never retained and therefore cannot be remembered. Even when a casual, “I’m sorry, what did you say your name is again?” is thrown into the conversation and it is discovered that Oompa Loompa Girl’s name is in fact “Melinda,” the likelihood of remembering that her name is “Melinda” is slim to none: but “Oompa Loompa Girl” will not be forgotten.

Later, with friends, these nicknamed faces will be mentioned in conversation; everyone will immediately understand which person is being described based on the associated nickname. Some may even already have the same or similar nickname for that person. Evidently, the college student species’ brains similarly process  information in this way.

The art of memorizing names emerged upon accidental coincidence that fortunately solved this error in brain processing. As usual, I missed the “My name is _______” part of the conversation because my brain was too busy mentally exclaiming the degree of resemblance this guy had to Charmander, the Pokemon. When I pulled the “I’m sorry, what did you say your name is again?” card, my eyes widened with good fortune when he responded, “Charlie.” At that very moment, he officially was titled “Charlie the Charmander.” I would therefore successfully remember to address him as “Charlie,” although I’d still refer to him as “Charlie the Charmander” with friends in order to properly identify him and distinguish him from any other Charlies they may know. Alas, a revelation occurred: create nicknames for people that are not only associated with initial impressions of them, but also with their actual names.

Since then, I have encountered new faces and successfully remembered their names due to nicknames such as Lazy-Eye Liz, Ghetto-Fab Greg, Commuter Chris, Trackie Chris, and Richy Chris. Sometimes, mnemonic devices based on associated thought trains are used instead. For example, I met these guys Louis and Chad, but my brain somehow insisted on replacing “Chad” with “Brad.” So, I sorted and properly retained their names by thinking of Louis and Clark from the Louis and Clark Expedition, and applied the “C” from the “Clark” to the “ad” from the “Brad” that I remembered, successfully resulting in “Louis and Chad.” Similarly, I had difficulty remembering that a face nicknamed “College McDude” by my friends is actually called “Jake.” So, I associated “College McDude” with the segment of Nickelodeon’s The Amanda Show called “Totally Kyle,” in which the main character, Kyle, saturates his sentences with the word “dude” in excess, the same way ditsy girls saturate their sentences with the word “like” in excess.

These tactics of the art of memorizing names may seem complicated, but they effectively accommodate the somewhat handicap  brain processes of the college student species.

Chief Wahoo – batting cleanup for Indian stereotypes since 1947.

by Jeffery Racheff

Neon headdresses. Gleaming tomahawk axes. Half-naked men covered in war paint – these are not the sights of a Native American war dance. No, they’re staples of American sporting events. Indian images, mascots and logos are ubiquitous at football and baseball games, and there are countless teams throughout the country that use their likenesses. But at what point does their use stop being good clean fun… and cross over into exploitation?

A good majority of sports teams with images derived from Native Americans are called either the Chiefs, the Braves or the Warriors. Their logos range from arrowheads and spears to the profiles of stately-looking Indian warriors. But some representations venture onto shaky ground. The Cleveland Indians’ mascot, Chief Wahoo, has a particularly sunny demeanor that some Native Americans find offensive. His big grin and candy-apple skin color are similar to the stereotypes of “dandified” or happy-go-lucky “colored people” popular in the early 20th century.

To put it in perspective, imagine if the Chief’s skin was turned black, his name changed to Homie Jerome and the feather replaced with an afro-pick. That wouldn’t fly for a second because most of us have come to see that these types of depictions perpetuate negative stereotypes. So is exploiting Red-Face for cheers the same as exploiting Black-Face for laughs? Is allowing a team to call itself the Brooklin Redmen (a lacrosse team in Ontario) really that much different than calling yourself the Dayton Darkies, the Jacksonville Jewboys, or the Chattanooga China Men? And why don’t we have more teams like The University of Northern Colorado’s racial rebuttal, the Fighting Whities?

Native Americans are the only ones who can say whether or not a team name or mascot is offensive. There are those who claim Indians should be treated as human beings, not objects for entertainment, but there are also plenty who welcome the honor as a tribute to their culture’s legacy. The University of Utah Utes, for example, received full approval from the Indian Ute Tribe for use of their name. The Florida State Seminoles mascots, Chief Osceola and his horse Renegade, even don tribe-sanctioned regalia designed by women of the Seminole tribe. And it seems the Supreme Court doesn’t think it’s too big of a deal either. Earlier this month, the nation’s top court decided not to hear a case against the NFL’s name for its Washington franchise, the Redskins, even though the National Congress of American Indians calls it “patently offensive, disparaging and demeaning.”

There are also plenty of teams that exploit other cultures, like Vikings, Trojans and Irish people – so where are their protesters? Well, to start, the Trojans weren’t on the receiving end of a massive genocide. If anything, they were the ones doing the massacring. Also, there are countless city and university sports teams that have little to do with the Native American names they appropriate (unlike Notre Dame and its Fighting Irish), so the two examples can’t be fairly compared.

Still, when Johnny Sports Fan joins in on the Tomahawk Chop, it’s not very likely that he is intentionally acting out ill-will towards Indians or their cultures. He probably just wants to get drunk, watch baseball, and have people leave his team traditions alone. Unfortunately this is a little bigger than athletic traditions – it’s about cultural traditions too. In an age where awareness of the sensitivities of others is virtually inescapable, you have to reconsider what should no longer be tolerated. Finding a mascot not based on people who want no part of it seems like common sense.

The previous installments in this series can be found here and here.

What I am after is a natural way to develop the usefulness of the idea of a vector, and in the previous post I suggested that a shopping list gives us a good start.  Here, I want to show some natural notations for that idea, even though that notation will look very different from the standard notation used in typical math class and typical textbooks.

Let’s start with this:

You can recognize it as a shopping list for a grocery store.  We want 5 apples, 2 six-packs of Coke, etc.  For each item, we say what it is we want, and how many of those we want.  Though it looks like a bunch of different things that are only loosely connected, it is essential for our purposes here that we can also look at it as a single whole.  That single whole is the shopping list, and it corresponds to a single trip to the grocery store, a single shopping cart, and a single grocery receipt.  The single whole is what we are calling a vector, here represented as a box with two columns, one column for the things and one column to indicate how many of each of these things.

Sometimes, we will find it useful to turn the whole thing on its side:

The standard notation for vectors in textbooks would show this as (5,2,3,2), which leaves out the very things that allows us to see what the numbers are supposed to mean.  The good thing about the standard notation, of course, is that it is really really compact.  But sometimes being too concise can remove all the flavor.  (There is the famous joke from Woody Allen where he describes War and Peace after speed-reading it: “It’s about some Russians.”)

Of course, there are other situations than shopping lists that could be modeled in the same way.  Here, as an example, is a stock portfolio:

The box above represents a single portfolio, consisting of three different stocks.  It isn’t enough to know which stocks you own, it also matters how many shares of each.

And the “X” on the pirate’s treasure map may indicate the location of the treasure like so:

and the readout on the gasoline pump (and on your receipt) might say:

The position of a ball dropped from a height on a graph might be recorded as:

So what’s the big deal?  We haven’t done anything yet, we have just recorded some data in a consistent format.  All I can suggest at this point is that this consistent format is convenient and somewhat self-contained.  In the next post I will introduce simple operations on vectors, such as vector addition.

Coming Attractions: soon, we’ll even make sense out of vector inner products and show how those arise in a natural way.

For an introduction to this series of posts, see here.

Imagine Joe going up to the drive-through, to order for himself and his room mates.  Their orders are all combined on a piece of paper.  He reads it at the order window: “2 hamburgers, 1 fries, 1 coke, 1 cheeseburger, 1 fries, 3 hamburgers, 2 cokes.”  At the pick up window, he pays and gets the stuff.  Before driving away, he checks to make sure everything is there.  He counts 3 cokes, 1 cheeseburger, 2 fries, 4 hamburgers.  Does this match his order?

There is nothing particularly complicated about this scenario, and I trust you can quickly determine the answer.  What’s interesting in this scenario is all the things we tend to take for granted when we think about this situation.

Let’s compare the original shopping list with Joe’s count after receiving the order:

Shopping List
2 hamburgers
1 fries
1 coke
1 cheeseburger
1 fries
3 hamburgers
2 cokes

Joe’s original Count
3 cokes
1 cheeseburger
4 hamburgers
2 fries

In the shopping list, hamburgers come first, whereas in Joe’s count, cokes come first.  The shopping list has seven entries, and Joe’s count has only four.  Yet we don’t fault Joe’s count on those grounds, but rather that one hamburger is missing.  If it wasn’t for the one hamburger, we’d think of Joe’s count as equivalent to the shopping list.  The fact that the shopping list has two separate entries with fries doesn’t seem to be critical; what’s critical to Joe is that the totals match.  What does that mean?  It means that there is the right number of hamburgers, as well as the right number of fries, as well as the right number of everything else.  For Joe, extra fries wouldn’t necessarily compensate for missing hamburgers, and cheeseburgers wouldn’t work as substitutes for missing cokes.  What Joe expects is that the count shows the right stuff, and in the right amount for each of the stuff.

After Joe gets an additional hamburger, he is ready to head home.  His count is updated as follows:

Joe’s updated Count
3 cokes
1 cheeseburger
4 hamburgers
2 fries
1 hamburger

If you are thinking that his updated count should really look like this:

Your Count
3 cokes
1 cheeseburger
5 hamburgers
2 fries

then we are partially in agreement.  Yes, your count shows the same totals as the original shopping list.  Yes, your version of the count seems particularly clean and lean: there is only one line that pertains to hamburgers, and only one line that pertains to cokes, etc.  In contrast, the following count seems to lose vital information:

Counting Gone Overboard
11 items

There is something that the original Shopping List, Joe’s updated Count and Your Count have in common, which is not shared by Joe’s Original Count nor the Counting Gone Overboard.  What those three have in common is that they are really all talking about the same order.  In contrast, Joe’s Original Count is missing a hamburger, and the Counting Gone Overboard doesn’t distinguish between hamburgers and cokes (it could refer to an order of 11 hamburgers just as easily).

To constitute a clear order, our piece of paper must have numbers on it, but numbers alone are insufficient: it must be clear for each number exactly what is being counted: it isn’t just “3″, but “3 cokes”.  So, more precisely, the order isn’t just a bunch of numbers, but rather a bunch of entries, where each entry combines a number with the thing that is being counted.  In this bunch of entries, the order of entries is not important, and we don’t particularly mind if there are multiple entries for hamburgers, or multiple entries for coke.  What we do care about is that we end up with the right total amount of coke, and the right total amount of hamburgers, and the right total amount of fries, etc.

In this series of posts, I’m going to use the name vector for these kinds of shopping lists.  What is important at this point is that you can look at the shopping list as a single thing, as a whole, and not merely as a collection of parts (entries).  Just as the shopping lists, a vector can be written in a number of equivalent ways.  As long as Joe comes home with the right stuff, it doesn’t particularly matter how the order was written.

In the next post in this series, I will play with this notion so you can see its usefulness, and introduce a useful notation to go with it.

There is a surprisingly versatile part of mathematics that deals with groupings and collections of things.  The main ideas involved are really quite easy and practical.  If you can make sense of a shopping list written by a spouse or parent, or if you can make sense of the paper cash register slip that the checkout person puts in your bag, you can make sense of this part of mathematics.  It is really too bad that the way textbooks and schools talk about this part of mathematics tends to abstract out all the sense-making parts and then hides even further behind fancy but rather forbidding names like vectors and matrices.  The part of mathematics I’m referring to is usually called vector algebra, or matrix algebra, or linear algebra.

I want to do a series of blog posts aimed at resurrecting the natural simplicity of the concept of a vector, by avoiding the straitjacket of the standard vector notation(s) for quite a while.  Of course I’ll connect up the work presented here with the standard notations and terminology, but there are other useful notations – I like a very flexible notation that is more ‘verbose’ than the standard one and that allows you to see what is going on.  This flexible notation looks more like a cash register receipt or like the shopping cart from Amazon.com or like a database table.

Traditionally, we first encounter vectors in physics class, where velocity and force are said to have a direction, not just an amount.  We learn to draw an arrow with a length equal to the amount of force, and with a direction that’s the direction in which the force is applied, and we learn to call this arrow a vector.  At this time we may even learn about the combined effect of two forces acting together but each in a different direction (e.g. a model airplane held by a string).  When we later learn in math class about vectors, what we learn may feel completely different: we may now be told that a vector is a sequence of numbers, written in this form: (3,2,10,1) and you may be shown rules for adding, subtracting and multiplying these sequences without having any idea where these rules came from.  If you are shown these completely arbitrary-looking rules, you may not even realize that something strange is going on – for this may not look any different from other parts of your secondary school math education.   When they say that (3,2,10,1) + (1,2,3,4) equals (4,5,13,5) this may appear innocent enough, and when they say that (3,2,10,1)-(1,2,3,4) equals (2,0,7,-3) this may not look too strange either, but if you then were to guess that (3,2,10,1) times (1,2,3,4) would be (3,6,30,4) you may hear instead: “no, (3,2,10,1) times (1,2,3,4) equals 41, and this is called an inner product.”  The teacher may show you how the inner product is computed, but the odds are that from the description you will still have no idea as to what real-life question “41″ is the answer to, let alone why you should care.

My promise to you is that this series will be easy and fun and sensible, ; that by the end, you’ll see what the big deal is, and why the textbook people think it is so important, and you will get to see how the standard way of presenting the material loses everything that made it easy, fun and sensible to start with but ended up with an extremely compact notation.  At that point you will be in a very good place to judge if the trade-off was worth it.

What, you've never sailed in a castle before?

by Jeffrey Racheff

In many ways, a cruise is the ultimate vacation. You get to travel, relax in the sun, watch live shows, dance and drink, all within a few steps of your own room. It’s like Vegas on the high seas. And if cruise ships are like hotel-casinos with rudders, then the MS Oasis of the Seas is like the Bellagio, MGM Grand and Luxor all rolled into one. Weighing over 225,000 tons (it displaces as much water as an aircraft carrier), her majesty is the world’s largest passenger vessel. She has 16 decks, a capacity of 6,300 and cost over $1 billion to forge. She is Finland’s largest export, ever.

As the crown jewel of Royal Caribbean International, her name was the result of a competition held last year. The lucky winner (who received quite the complimentary cruise package) successfully caught on to the cruising industry’s penchant for naming its boats after the royally superlative. The fleet for Carnival Cruises, for example, includes Liberty, Conquest, Freedom, Glory, Miracle and Splendor—names with high aspirations.

And it makes sense when you consider the vacations they’re offering. Nowhere else can you find an escape from the real world without ever actually leaving the better comforts of the real world behind. Cruise ships are designed to resemble floating palaces — grand ballrooms, swimming pools, hundreds of waiting attendants — and we are the kings and queens. More often than not, nowadays, the ship is the destination. And the tours don’t exactly encourage otherwise. Boats travel by day, dock at night and more-or-less have surprisingly little contact with nature.

In short, these ships are meant to be self-contained and designed to have passengers spending most of their time and money on board. That’s why Oasis of the Seas is the perfect name. It suggests not only the paradise on ship, but also the dangerous world of discomfort outside. Why would anyone want to venture into a port full of crimps, pimps and chimps when prepackaged adventure awaits them within wobbly walking distance of their cabin door?

After Titanic, suggestions of size, power and straight-up indestructibility didn’t float so well — there’s an all-too-obvious irony in something that claims to be so powerful being felled by a sharp ice cube. The Oasis, however, eschews godliness for exoticism. Of course, the list of names for cruise ships is not without a few oddballs. Some of the more peculiar ones include Celebrity Xpedition, Marco Polo, Sally Albatross and Black Watch, which sounds like a cruise for mercenaries.

So if you’re looking for a vacation on an expensive floating city, hop aboard the Oasis of the Seas for the ultimate super-sized cruise. Just remember: drinking the water that surrounds this Oasis will only get you as far as the sick bay.

Image via Wikipedia

CHOOSING A CHARACTER NAME

Here’s one way to figure out a character name.

1. Take the name of the first pet you ever owned, or your parents, or your friend…
2. Get the name of the first street you ever lived on.  If the street is a number like 157th Avenue, go with any street name you ever lived on.

Now you have your name.  My character’s name is “Ringo Darling”!  LOL.

OR

For the first name:

1. Take the first three letters of your last name.
2. Add to that, the first two letters of your first name.

For the last name:

1. Take the first two letters of your mother’s maiden name.
2. Add to that, the first three letters of the name of the city you were born in OR the street you live on now, whichever sounds better.

Mine turns out to be: Bermo Tamel

So, you have (or are starting) a small business. Now the big challenges are: How do I do this right? and, How do I get noticed?

Here’s a collection of posts I’ve put up over time, based on my experience. Since they are scattered over various venues, I decided to pull them together. Maybe they’ll be of some help:

Getting started

- 10 Lessons Learned Starting a Business

- How I Became a Consultant

Determining your focus

- What’s the Point?

- I’m Pursuing Niche Domination

- Who Needs You?

Personal Branding

- You – Projected

- Personal Branding: What’s your Value-Add?

Naming

- Don’t Make a Name for Yourself

- Product: Winner. Name: Loser

Branding/Marketing your business

- Do you Pass the T-shirt Test?

- Laundry List Marketing

- How to be Unremarkable

Using social networking

- Do you Have an Opportunity Network?

- Getting Started with Social Networking

- The Strategic Serendipity of Social Media

- Feed People

Storytelling

- Telling the Company Story

- What’s in a Name?

Core principles

- Ask the Right Questions

The right people

- Picking Bad Apples

- Hiring for Virtue

Customer Service

- Eat Mor Chikin

- A Boy and his Legos

- Greetings…Done Right

The ultimate goal

- A cult following

Wanting to start your own business, but still working toward the goal? This is for you: Time. Talent. And Magic.

————-

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Twitter: @swoodruff

Connect with Steve Woodruff

by Alex Altman

I’ve taken a year-long sabbatical from naming to pursue scholarly interests in Quito, Ecuador. Even though I’m here on non-naming related business, I can’t help myself from noticing the peculiar way in which things are named. I’d be remiss if I didn’t report on some initial findings.

And so, I welcome you to the world of Ecuadorian naming and branding—En el Botón—if you will. Company and product naming in this Andean nation of 13 million people follows a simple yet perplexing pattern. For a name here to be “cool,” the only requirement is that it be an English word.  The perplexing part is that the English words seem to be picked at random and fused in ways that make no sense, either grammatically or with relation to the product or company being named.

I’ve gathered some of my favorites to share.  Grab some popcorn, or chochos y tostado, and enjoy.

Groggy: Clothes inspired by the Nyquil hangover. The logo colors and maple leaf makes me think that they’re ready to blame the Canadians for this oddball name.

Mayflower Chinese Food:  The Pilgrims brought many things with them aboard the Mayflower to America. Chinese food was not one of them.

Pilsener: (Pronounced “peel-sey-ner”) The official beer of Ecuador. Ask for a cerveza in any bar and you’ll get a cold one of these.  The funny thing is that Pilsener is actually a light lager with a taste as uninspired as the name. (Think Natural Light.)  It’s hard to see in the picture, but one of the gold medals on the label commemorates Pilsener’s induction into the Ecuadorian Marketing Hall of Fame in 2005.  I’m assuming that a decent name isn’t a requirement for getting in.

Monkey Hippy: They must have used an automatic name generator for this one.  ”Monkey Hippy” sounds too awkward to have come from a human. What do monkeys and hippies have to do with peanuts?

Funky Fish: I’m guessing Funky Fish comes from the same family as Monkey Hippy. One went into the nut business, the other the stuffed animal business. Makes perfect sense, right?

Snob: Purveyors of inexpensive condiments like this 90 cent bag of jelly, which makes the name choice that much more puzzling.  I find that Snob jelly goes great with Snooty peanut butter on toasted Smug bread.

Sunglass Hot: Valedictorian at the Knockoff School of Naming. Ray Bams and Maui Gins sold here.

Hunters: I hear that the waitresses at Hunters carry big fake plastic rifles with them at all times.

Menestras del Negro: A menestra is a local lentil dish served with rice and in the case of this chain, a side of racism.

Windows: now accepting feedback

by Eli Altman

I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while, but I’ve been tied up.

Let’s get down to it. Why is the new Microsoft OS called Windows 7? If you look at the number of operating systems they’ve released, it should be Windows 12 or so. Maybe it’s named for the seven days of the week. Or maybe it’s called 7 because Windows doesn’t take seven minutes to boot up anymore.

In any case, here’s an abridged history of the Windows OS: In the beginning, Windows 1, 2 and 3 came in order—that makes enough sense. Then they went to Windows 95 before coming back to NT 4. Then comes Windows 98 and 2000. Next, Windows Me represents the first time they didn’t include any numbers. (I guess that’s what you have to do when you release two operating systems in the same year.) After Windows Me came XP, then everyone’s favorite Vista, and finally (drum roll please) Windows 7!

I never saw it coming! You figure they’re all into aspirational Spanish words like Vista, and then they go surprise everyone by kicking it old school with a name like Windows 7. Maybe, since Vista was the only OS that was actually named, and it fizzled a bit, they figured people would be weary of another OS with a real name. Then again, it’s not like Vista was the first Windows release with issues.

I guess when you get down to it, everyone knows when Microsoft releases a new operating system. It’s not like they’re new to the game and need a catchy name to help spread the word.  What Microsoft needed this time was a smooth OS release, and so far, Windows 7 has delivered on that.

Name that ferry: yes, ferries are big in Washington State.

Is there finally a product name for the mythical Apple Tablet? Some people think so, since Apple allegedly acquired the TabletMac trademark from Axiotron last year.

Since September, an advisory committee on Whidbey Island off the coast of Seattle has been gathering potential names for a new ferry between Port Townsend and Keystone. Potential names include Squi Qui, Snakelum, Calista, Skookumchuck, Leschi, Defiance, Haida, The Salish Sea, and Mary Margaret Haugen.

Dockers is rebranding its faded 1990s image with a new line of khakis, with ads reminding men to “wear the pants.”

Comcast has renamed its OnDemand Online service to Fancast Xfinity TV, or Xfinity for short.

Raid will kill for you.

by Jeffery Racheff

They scurry in your walls and lurk between your sheets. They bite, sting, hiss and squeak, carving holes and grossing out guests. They’re pests. But more importantly, they’re intruders — and for that they deserve to be annihilated.

So how do you go about ridding yourself of these vermin? Do you attack with your own weaponry, say, a can of Hot Shot and a heavy heel? Or do you call in the big guns, the professionals with serious bug-killing experience? Whichever you choose, your options want you to know how well they do the job. Because in the bug-killing business, efficiency is everything.

More precisely, efficiency is ruthlessness. Effective product names for insecticides, like Raid, Onslaught, and Terminix, connote viciousness and speed. They sound like black-metal bands because they hit hard and fast. It’s as if they’re so powerful you just need to press the nozzle and a swat team of death will come breaking down rodent doors. Which is, in fact, all you need to do. Take for example the Exocutor Insect-A-Kill Ultraviolet Fly Zapper. Add a futuristic sounding model number, like T5000, and you have yourself the ultimate cold-blooded killing machine.

Of course, people want ruthlessness when it comes to pest extermination. A product that shows mercy has no place in the world of bug control because it suggests it’s okay to let the creatures escape unmaimed. People view pests — roaches, rats and ants — as more than just creepy crawlies. They are intruders in our homes, therefore, they should be dealt with savagely: with fists, not eviction notices. That’s why you’ll never see a tag-line that says “show those termites the door,” or “ever wish there was a way to teach ants manners?”  No, they sound more like “murder bugs before they attack you in your sleep.”

The companies that do the extermination for you, like Clark or Scott’s, have names that bring to mind a trustworthy uncle or neighbor—someone who has experience doing this sort of dirty work. If killing bugs yourself makes you feel guilty or squeamish, there’s a nice strong man to do it for you while you cower in the dining room. Mr. Clark is willing to eliminate those icky bugs by any means necessary, while your hands stay clean. Of course, the advertised image of a friendly, clean cut, milk-man with a Ghostbusters photon pack doesn’t appear to mesh well with his actual job as the harbinger of death, but that’s the contradiction people want. Death with a big smile. Just like the cartoonish commercials for Raid that show goofy green bugs scheming to invade the kitchen, only to be foiled by a giant impenetrable fog. They scream “RRAAAIID!” and then explode with a poof, much to the delight of children watching at home.

No one likes bugs in their home, but there are clearly two schools of thought on what to do about it. If you’re cool with death, Terminix and Raid put the power in your hands. If you’re not, The Orkin Man, with his white teeth and clean uniform, will be glad to bill you for it. So to all you pests out there living comfortable lives — your days are numbered. Because, in the words of some of the most zealous exterminators around, the Starship Troopers, “the only good bug is a dead bug.” Happy hunting.

Semantic deficits in Alzheimer’s disease have been widely documented, but little is known about the integrity of semantic memory in the prodromal stage of the illness. The aims of the present study were to: (i) investigate naming abilities and semantic memory in amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), early Alzheimer’s disease (AD) compared to healthy older subjects; (ii) investigate the association between naming and semantic knowledge in aMCI and AD; (iii) examine if the semantic impairment was present in different modalities; (iv) study the relationship between semantic performance and grey matter volume using voxel-based morphometry. Results indicate that both naming and semantic knowledge of objects and famous people were impaired in both aMCI and early AD groups, when compared to healthy age- and education-matched controls. Item-by-item analyses showed that anomia in aMCI and early AD was significantly associated with underlying semantic knowledge of famous people but not with semantic knowledge of objects. Moreover, semantic knowledge of the same concepts was impaired in both the visual and the verbal modalities. Finally, voxel-based morphometry analyses revealed that semantic impairment in aMCI and AD was associated with cortical atrophy in the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) region as well as in the inferior pre-frontal cortex (IPC), some of the key regions of the semantic cognition network. These findings suggest that the semantic impairment in aMCI may result from a breakdown of semantic knowledge of famous people and objects, combined with difficulties in the selection, manipulation and retrieval of this knowledge.

from Neuropsychologia

Mick and Keith are known for being tasteful. So why shouldn't their wine be?

by Jeffery Racheff

We all know how rock ‘n’ roll sounds, but have you ever wondered what it tastes like? If so, raise your glasses to Wines That Rock, a new company that wants to officially merge the two staples of reckless abandon – music and liquor – into one spectacular bottle. Your tongue will never be the same.

Crafted from the partnership between rock band manager RZO and the Mendocino Winery in California, Wines That Rock offers distinct wine varieties inspired by some of the greatest rock musicians of the past century. Available now are The Rolling Stones’ Forty Licks Merlot, Woodstock Chardonnay and Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon Cabernet Sauvignon, each of which displays iconic album art for their labels. They run about $17 a bottle, or $50 for anyone brave enough to take on a triple dose of groove booze.

But these wines aren’t just left to stew in silence. No, they receive direct inspiration. “Traditionally, you create the wine and then name it based on its personality,” says Wines That Rock co-founder Rob Roy (not the Scottish highlander). “With these wines, we blasted the music in the cellar of the winery and developed a bottle of wine that captured the attitude of the music.” That means these particular grapes rock out to “Brain Damage” or “Sympathy for the Devil” as they ferment, no doubt enjoying their transformation infinitely more than the suckers left to rot in noiselessness.

I can’t help but wonder what would happen if the young wine preferred Led Zeppelin over Pink Floyd, or The Beatles over The Rolling Stones? What if it hated hippies and yet was forced to listen to hundreds of hours of Country Joe and the Fish serenading mud-covered Bohemians? Would that make it agitated and turn sour, like a Star Wars fan who’s forced to watch a Star Trek marathon? Or maybe the lyrics to “Money” really strikes a nerve and sends the alcohol content soaring to 85%. Either way, it’s just as ridiculous to think that a Roger Waters solo can influence a wine as it is to think that a wine might have its own musical taste before it develops a palatal one.

Who really wants to try a drink that’s meant to taste like Keith Richards’ attitude anyway? The winemakers obviously don’t want it to remind you of something that trickled off the back of a 65 year-old Englishman, but I can’t help but picture it. And in that case, “Forty Licks” would conjure flavors of sweat and cigarette butts, with slight notes of whiskey, cocaine and a decade’s worth of heroin. Instead of fish or steak, it would pair well with prostitutes.

Also, wine is not exactly the type of alcohol that conjures dirty, sexy rock music. Kenny G, Bette Midler, The Trans Siberian Orchestra — those are the kinds of musical acts you associate with chardonnay. A band like Pink Floyd should have a maddening drink like absinthe, and The Rolling Stones could have something sleazy and shamefully sexy, like Thunderbird or Mad Dog 20/20. Other bands would have their respective qualities in their own brand of beverage. Janis Joplin’s Gin, Yanni’s Fresh-Squeezed Orange Juice, E-40’s 40s, Pantera Gasoline — the possibilities are endless.

But whatever the drink is, being tied to rock royalty can’t hurt. So while Forty Licks Merlot probably tastes like any other wine, for an adoring fan it is too curious an experiment to pass up.

US Now, le documentaire, cliquez sur l'image pour voir la video

Ont participé à cette séance ludOéducative décisive : Caro, Steph, Olivier, Jos, Vin’S, François et derfmyself (crédit de la séance : 50 Bobopunkt). C’est Steph et François qui se partagent la mise (100 bobopunkt) pour leur accueil (détails des autres special prize en fin d’article…). Remarque au passage : +75% de participation, si c’est pas de la mobilisation ça !

Les contours de la  séance ludOéducative commence à se dessiner avec une nouvelle fois trois temps forts : éveil, réflexion, action. Tous cela dans un esprit convivial et particpatif bien sûr.

EVEIL

Pour l’éveil le support film fonctionne bien. Après vote c’est finalement le documentaire Us Now qui a été retenu notamment pour son format cours (1 heure) vs The Company qui sera reproprosé. Us Now est un documentaire sur les usages participatifs du web (mais pas que) et passe en revue un certain nombre d’initiatives innovantes et inspirantes (Couchsurfing, Ebbsfleet United, Zopa, Slice the pie, SILK…).

REFLEXION

Une nouvelle fois le support film a servi de point de départ à l”échange et plus largement au deuxième temps de la séance: celui du débat, de la réflexion. Apprécié il n’a dans un premier temps pas convaincu tout le monde sur le lien avec nos sujets Dédé. A Caro, la plus expérimentée de nous, de préciser que si en effet il n’aborde pas le volet écologique, ce documentaire traite les volets tout aussi important (et parfois plus déclicat à aborder) du social et de l’économique.

Ce film a notamment soulevé une discussion sur les limites de la valeur de la majorité en fonction des domaines d’applications (domaines cités: santé publique, grands projets).

Ce support avait en tout cas le mérite de mettre en valeur le formidable pouvoir mobilisateur du Web 2.0. Le web comme outil participatif de prise de décisions collectives par les individus et une opportunité de recréer du lien social au delà de la sphère virtuelle, à l’échelle locale dans nos vies quotidiennes.

En cela c’était une parfaite introduction au troisième temps fort de la soirée : l’action.

ACTION

En l’occurence le chantier web, avec notamment l’issue du naming participatif. Ce sera donc… Bobopunkt !

A l’aise avec ce nom, encapsulant un certain état d’esprit en phase avec le projet, ayant fait jusque là ses preuves, il n’est pas apparu opportun d’en changer, à ce stade. C’est donc a l’unanimité que bobopunkt a été retenu.

Bobopunkt au revoir,

bobopunkt toujours,

nouveau bobopunkt bonjour !

De la discussion sur l’objet du projet, son ambition, ses modalités, il ressort les points suivants :

• le blog n’est pas une fin en soi, c’est un point de départ, une plateforme pour fédérer des énergies, un outil participatif pour créer du lien, du sens et de l’action.
• il s’adresse à la communauté des gens qui s’y retrouvent. C’est une communauté ouverte. Aujourd’hui c’est nous, demain c’est toujours nous avec  ceux qui souhaitent nous rejoindre. Rencontres, amis d’amis et que sais-je encore viendront enrichir nos horizons.
• on y trouve ce qu’on y apporte : info, bon plan, expérience, point de vue, questionnement, doute, projet, action.
• niveau modalité (à ce jour): la séance ludOéducative. Un responsable par séance ludOéducative réfléchit  au thème, support, projet (1semaine) et propose à la communauté avec appel au vote, contribution en amont de la séance (1semaine)
• rythme des séances: toutes les 2 ou 3 semaines avec une préférence affirmée pour le dimanche fin de journée, moment propice à ce type d’activité ludOéducative.

Pour continuer cette discussion et notamment formaliser les fondamentaux du projet je vous invite à vous rendre sur la page blanche.

Pour ceux qui ont déjà plein d’idées vous pouvez aussi vous rendre sur l’open brainsto.

Pour ceux qui veulent le détail des Bobopunkt et en savoir plus sur les crêpes  de tonton Jos’ c’est sur Bobopunktômètre que ça se passe.

Next step : séance ludOéducative n°4 by Vin’S. Date à préciser, soit le 13 décembre soit exceptionnellement en semaine (un vote ?)