studiot

I think the pit you have dug for yourself in this thread is due to your constant assumption the right and wrong / correct and incorrect / true and false / provable and unprovable are all binary choices in Philosophy. They are not. The whole thrust of most philosophies (and there are many) is that most, if not all, observations and assessments belong on a sliding scale. Almost nothing is black or white, shades of grey prevail. As a for instance take your assertion above that absolute truth is valid in all times and places and that a good example of this is mathematics. Seems clear enough doesn't it? And yet there are huge branches of mathematics devoted to the difference between 'local' and 'global' properties of particular mathematical objects, wherein some property may hold locally, but not globally. Yet more telling is that much of this mathematics is vitally important to modern technology.

There are clearly as many views on the meanings of philosophy, science and reality as there are posters here. Small wonder there are such differences or that this type of discussion belongs in the pub. Let's all go down to the pub to finish it.

Multiplication and division can introduce some funny effects when applied to quantities with units. for instance multiplication can loose all the information as in frequency times period = 1 Division, on the other hand, can loose the units as in velocity ratio or mechanical advantage or many other dimensionless ratios. It is also clear that whilst multiplication / division can be modeled as repeated addition / subtraction for integers, the model suffers when we introduce non integer quantities. Physically the model is also suspect with say a hydraulic force multiplier which multiplies the input by a fixed scalar.

Not sure why you are replying to me, Mike? I don't recall ever discussing grad, div & curl with you.

Isn't referring to 'fluid dynamics' a bit limiting? How about Continuum Mechanics which includes FD and much more besides? I say this because there are many texts at many levels including this in the title.

Reflections on the political year in Parliament.

What did you make of my reference? One way to look at what you are asking is like this. Consider the parabola y = x2. What do you need to be able to draw it (for it to exist) ? Well you need the +x axis and the -x axis and the +y axis. But you do not need the -y axis. In fact you do not need the entire half plane below the x axis. So you are asking the equivalent of Does that half plane exist for my purposes? Would you agree?

Not exactly but I think you are referring to what is known as intrinsic geometry. Perhaps if you would like to explain in greater detail? This extract from Elementary Geometry : Roe : Oxford University Press might help. Read paragraph 12.1 in particular.

Was there a question or discussion point or was this just advertising?

As as said backalong, your study is intriguing. My position is that at the moment I am reserving judgement as it is still incomplete. The geographical limitations have already pointed out by others and I suggest that it is illogical to use the Scottish/English border as a cutoff. However that is not a refutation, rather it provides opportunities to extend the study. Also the test of the value of such is "Can this be used for prediction either in hindsight or into the future?" That would be the logical next step and if the effect is repeated in other temporal and spatial domains it would greatly strengthen it.

You can find one of those any week The House is in session, particularly on the day of PMQT.

I note that Oban has suffered two earthquakes in the last week so I wonder what riots you will tie into these?

It's a question of understanding, not doubt. So if I understand you correctly you are taking instance of a quake in England & Wales, without further subdivision, and any occurrence of a riot in the same total area. The UK has a substantially diagonally banded geological structure, running SW to NE. So (and I don't know if the were any), a quake in Deal would be linked to a riot in Barrow-in furness if they fell with your selected time frame. Such a link would cut directly across all those diagonals. I don't know if the other diagonal would be more productive. That is a quake in Penzance linking to another Jarrow riot.

While you mention ground there was a question backalong about the geographic space compared for the riot and the earthquake. Since neither are points in space their choice is enormously important so can you outline how this was done?

Excellent question +1

Hello Alan, I meant to add in tha last post. I hope you take my comments as genuine testing of the methodology, not attempts to discredit the study. The subject is genuinely intriguing.

Another methodology query, Alan. I can be reasonably sure that the BGS report of quakes is accurate. For 'riots' I am less sure about the reporting accuracy. Who reported them to whom Who assessed what the definition of a riot is and whether each report met this definition. How confident can you be that before quake when there may have been little to fill the news space riots were not over reported and after a newsworthy event they were not under-reported.T These factors may not account for the near 3:1 ratio you have presented, but have you considered them? Can I commend to you Standard Deviations by Gary Smith? In particular the discovery of the causes of cholera by methods such as you are employing

Whilst I'm not suprised to hear this, I was more interested in its corollary. There should therefore be a lower than average incidence during periods of inclement weather. You often find freak (inclement) weather associated with/following quake activity. This suggests a pattern (to be investigated) quake [math] \to [/math] freak weather [math] \to [/math] increased/decreased riot activity or perhaps all three can stem from a common cause.

Alan, thank you for sharing this. You seem to have negotiated the proper side of the line in providing enough information in your opening post to justify a link to a much larger paper IMHO. I don't know about the correctness of the hypothesis, I have heard studies of correlations between weather conditions and human (and other life) behaviour and also studies correlating weather conditions with quake activity. So perhaps there are more links to be drawn? An authority who might well be interested is Brian Fagan https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=brian+fagan&hl=en-GB&gbv=2&oq=brian+fagan&gs_l=heirloom-serp.3..0i67j0i7i30l8j0.11781.11781.0.12015.1.1.0.0.0.0.141.141.0j1.1.0....0...1ac.1.34.heirloom-serp..0.1.141.1CHWHcSRVUM

Hello Jenn and welcome. I know nothing of your Saginaw event, and unfortunately our pet geologist who have know escaped nearly a year ago. However I can tell you that meteor impact is associated with what is known as the iridium spike because meteors often contain the very rare (on Earth) element iridium. Googling gives lots of information about more famous impacts and craters, but I haven't found any measurements at your location. Perhaps you should ask your local college or library?

I didn't supply a reference, but the book I drew from is http://www-astro.physics.ox.ac.uk/~pgf/Pedro_Ferreira/The_Perfect_Theory.html Please note this is a great source of understanding and further reading but it is not technical enough for your purposes.

As you know I am a muddy boots, dirty hands technologist. As such I have always felt GR to be inferring too much from too little. So I was suprised to learn that over the years there have been several theories of general relativity, with different terms and constants in the equations changing as new material has arisen. So I recommend you be very aware of which version you incorporate material from.

Well this is the first time I have seen this thread and I am looking forward to reading all the posts carefully. It is a long time since I was motivated to get my boots out of the mud and read detailed thoughts about cosmology. +1 There is much to consider here and the quantity accounts for why we don't see posts from you more often but this caught my eye Several of your bullet points boil down to saying that we can observe effects in the material universe that require another generalised axis, dimension or formalised degree of freedom to explain and write equations for. I agree with this completely and have made this point before, although my example (nuclear disintegration/radioactivity) does not require continuity but relates the phenomena directly to the counting numbers.

Don't forget you entitled this thread curve fitting and interpolation. Pure mathematics only admits one situation and it is deterministic. That is you know the true function and its values at certain data points and want intermediate ones between the points. There is no choice of curve(s) to fit. For example you have sine tables with the sine at every degree and want the sine of 23o 30'. Numerical mathematics adds two more scenarios. Firstly you have a set of data points, but you dont know true function at all. For example you have a set of tide tables with the tide height every 10 minutes and want to correct a set of soundings to mean sea level. You have the soundings at random times in the interval covered by your tables so you need the tide heights at say 11 minutes, 14 minutes, 18 minutes etc. Finally you may know the exact function, but it may be to difficult to handle so you choose a simpler one that is near enough. It is this third method that is the basis of all the finite element computer programs for structural engineering, fluid mechanics, electric and magnetic field plotting and so on. The calculus of variations and Lagrange-Hamiltonian mechanics are ways to choose such simpler functions.

Google the Brachistochrone problem.