For the first time in its history, the Dow Jones Industrial Average recently passed 12,000. It's Canadian counterpart, the TSX, did that earlier this same year and has since dropped back below.
Umm... twelve-thousand what?
After a bit of investigation, I just now, for the first time in my life, discovered what those numbers are. The Dow, for example, is a scaled average of 30 of the largest and most widely held public companies in the US. It's not a weighted average value because it needs to be scaled to compensate for the effect of stock splits and other adjustments. (A 100% change in a $1 stock has the same effect as a 1% change in a $100 stock.) I didn't dig any further than that, the initial impetus behind my curiosity sated.
So the Dow is simply an indication of how the US market is performing, based on the scaled average value of 30 of the top performers, the membership of which isn't always constant and neither is the degree by which each is scaled to come up with the average.
Interesting.
Also, I went to give blood last week. They poke your finger every time to make sure your iron content is good and to type your blood if you're a first-timer. I gave plasma instead of whole blood and part of that process is checking protein levels. If they're above 40, you're good to donate. Mine was 47. So I asked, "47 what?"
I was told it was a measure of the amount of protein in my blood and as long as levels were above that threshold, I was in the clear. So, the nurse didn't know what 47 meant, just that it was above the acceptable level. I sighed and didn't ask further. (It's still bugging me.)
I like my numbers to mean something. I like to wrap my head around more than an arbitrary value and know how it's derived and what effect a fluctuation up or down will have.
How many other numbers do I take for granted as having some intrinsic value without really knowing what they mean? The ones most commonly suspect are those regularly provided without a unit of measure. And it's not that they're really dimensionless, but simply knowing the value is supposed to be a good enough indication in itself. Not everybody needs to know the units behind some of the numbers we use so often, but I hate not knowing. For example, if I say that my blood pressure is 130/80, the time right now is 2:48 and the year is 2006, those all give some relative or implied reference, but what is the dimension of each? And does it really matter if you don't know?
.....
Here's some very tangible number crunching you can really sink your gums into and puts a familial spin on this otherwise tangential topic:
Tavish has been spitting up with alarming consistency since birth. Say about 30 times a day, to be conservative. Also let's say he donates about a teaspoon each time. (This, too, is conservative.) Allowing that he didn't really start churning it out until after the first month, we'll give that to him as a freebie. And he should grow out of it around eight months.
So the math on that looks like:
(30 times a day) times (30 days a month) times (7 months)
= 6,300 teaspoons of baby puke
= 8.2 gallons or 31 litres
Pretty gross, huh?
When you start measuring the gross quantities of baby puke....really man...go to bed.
But wow..that is a lot of curdled milk my friend.
Posted by: TerriTorial | Saturday, 28 October 2006 at 07:39 AM
But just think...every time he spits up...that's one teaspoon closer to the total. Finite numbers, however large, do have the benefit of being diminishable.
Posted by: Moksha Gren | Saturday, 28 October 2006 at 08:01 AM
Is that 8.2 gallons of breast milk? You know how many calories it takes to make a quart of breast milk? Do you?
Posted by: marian | Saturday, 28 October 2006 at 01:13 PM
Wow, Tavish is wasting some precious boob juice. Not on purpose, I'm sure. Poor little guy. But, from what I've seen of other people's kids, they don't even notice it. I say other people's kids because Ben never had that problem.
Posted by: Mark | Saturday, 28 October 2006 at 07:19 PM
Impressive (albeit depressing) statistics... Tav must have exceedingly well-developed stomach muscles (which I have become obsessed with of late...)
I detest numbers. Too tangible, too black-and-white, too unarbitrary. I'm allergic. Thank you for the explanation of the stock market, something I never wondered aboot. ;-)
Posted by: Linda | Sunday, 29 October 2006 at 01:10 AM
Math is hard, Barbie doll complains.
One for you, six word junkie.
Posted by: Moonshot | Sunday, 29 October 2006 at 05:05 PM
Totally unrelated to your post...but I came across this and thought, "I know someone just geeky enought to find this as interesting as I do!"
Posted by: Moksha Gren | Sunday, 29 October 2006 at 08:29 PM
Marian, no I don't. But there surely will be some sort of righteous comeuppance for both our boys in the future when they realise what they both wasted.
Posted by: Simon | Monday, 30 October 2006 at 01:44 PM
Here you go:
http://www.amarillomed.com/howto.htm
More than everything you wanted to know about your lab tests. ;)
Posted by: wil | Monday, 13 November 2006 at 10:12 AM