Monday, July 23, 2007

Am I fascinated by scale because I'm a Libra?

One of the greatest gifts given us by mathematics is a language for scale. It's how we know that 1,000 is different from 1, which is in turn different from 0.1.

One of my earlier memories is of attending this captivating exhibit on the limits of scale as understood thirty years ago. Those extremities have not been pushed back much further since then. Amusingly, it was only last year that I found out that it was produced by one of the most significant design houses of post-WWII America.

Someone (sadly uncredited, working for Nikon) has created an interactive work with the same lessons. Everyone should learn what's out there, what's up there, what's in there, and where we live in it all.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I have a degree in Computer Science where much of the course work revolved around discreet math, creative thinking, and problem solving.

Reading through your blog I see similarities in your thought process and mine. For the past year I have been contemplating an idea for measuring the moral value of an argument. The idea is posted at http://www.dogoodgauge.com.

I would like to hear your thoughts on this idea.