Math Error
Posted June 8th, 2008 by Howard TaylerThere was a math error in the punchline of Monday’s strip. Somehow I came up with a four-and-a-half-year figure for unloading the Eatonrun, which is wrong by a whopping nineteen years – a factor of about six.
Fortunately, somebody called my attention to the error, and in crunching the numbers again I found a better punchline. After all, twenty five years is funnier than four and a half.
The strip is stronger as a result. Oh, and for the record, Tagon is forty-eight years old.
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June 8th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
I liked both punchlines.
I’m just glad I was awake early enough to see the first one!
June 8th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
So, what *was* the first punchline?
June 9th, 2008 at 12:01 am
Sebastian: Something about putting off Tagon’s fiftieth birthday celebrations. Unfortunately, I forgot to save a copy before reloading. Oh, well, the new one’s way funnier, anyway.
Howard: I have another mathematical quibble:
Private
Aardvark, er, Aardman said the crates were 300 kg, and Lieutenant Pibald said they were a quarter of a ton. No conflict there – presumably they were speaking approximately. But, even taking the larger figure, 300 kg every ten seconds is only 1.8 t/min, which is only 40% of 4.5 t.So are there other teams moving cargo without using the grav-slingers, or what?
June 9th, 2008 at 1:31 am
Tagon and I are the same age…well, at least we were if we weren’t separated by a millennium.
I find this vaguely unsettling.
June 9th, 2008 at 2:35 am
Sam’s right. To get to 4.5 tons (metric) per minute, Pi’s team has to be shifting one crate every _FOUR_ seconds, not one every _ten_ seconds. That, or those crates have to mass 750kg apiece.
June 9th, 2008 at 3:22 am
Ummm . . Looks like I’ve still got the earlier version! :S
June 9th, 2008 at 3:50 am
Wouldn’t a top notch AI have figured out the inefficiency of the unload plan BEFORE it was implemented?
Howard, you slipping in your old age? (JK)
JT
June 9th, 2008 at 4:06 am
If you’ve still got the earlier version, then save it – that’s a rare and valuable, limited edition cartoon, right there!
Then, if you’re using IE, hold down the Shift key and press F5, to force a refresh of the whole page, and you should see the new version…
As for a ‘top notch’ AI, the Toughs can’t afford one that can work out what they’re going to do before they do it – they’re a little too unpredictable for it to be easy. Plus, it would make for a lousy plot, to have the smart-arse AI telling everyone how to do their jobs.
But even those of us too lazy to do the math saw this one coming. That’s a big ship, it’s going to take some serious effort to unload it.
June 9th, 2008 at 4:59 am
I love how Tagon’s brain works.
June 9th, 2008 at 5:21 am
Wow, I hope I still look that good when I’m 48 :-)
Ah, we’ll see in about 15 years.
June 9th, 2008 at 6:59 am
I was about to say, Howard switched the strips on me!
I guess that was my reward for reading at 11:45 at night.
June 9th, 2008 at 8:23 am
I guess I don’t understand why they don’t just teraport the cargo to the station, or alternately have TAG figure out what each refugee would get, and teraport each alotment to each refuge…
June 9th, 2008 at 8:41 am
They have been inside a Terraport Denial System for quite a few hours.
June 9th, 2008 at 8:42 am
ANOTHER math error.
Obviously I was asleep at the wheel when I scripted this one. Let’s see… the buffer-tally on that strip says I drew it on May 6th, which means I scripted it either on the 5th or the 6th. Hmmm… no odd planetary conjunctions. No trips to the hospital. No good excuses, unfortunately.
It’s fixed now.
June 9th, 2008 at 8:45 am
And now, checking my numbers with you guys: 4500kg (4.5 metric tons) divided by 300kg gives us 15. That’s how many packages per minute need to be grabbed to arrive at that number in panel 2.
Sixty seconds in a minute divided by fifteen packages in the same minute…
60/15=4. So… on package every four seconds.
June 9th, 2008 at 9:25 am
Howard – you’ve done the math (hopefully it worked this time, I’m still way too lazy to check) but have you thought about it?
You’re saying one single guy is throwing one of those crates every *four* seconds? That’s just about plausible, with power armour and gravy to do the heavy lifting – but could even a boosted soldier keep that up for any length of time?
Is this just fitting the plot to the number of tons/minute so you don’t have to change the other two panels of text, or is there some method to your madness?
Not that I’m that worried either way (or I’d have bothered to do the math myself), I got the basic idea that it’s going to take too long to do it that way, and they need a new plan…
But it does make the conversation at the recieving end pretty (back on the 3rd) pretty much impossible – if you’re catching a box every four seconds, you *don’t* have time to talk.
June 9th, 2008 at 9:27 am
And if you’re even *thinking* about changing the strip *again*, get an adult to help you with the difficult math ;-)
June 9th, 2008 at 9:32 am
For somebody who didn’t bother to do the math himself, you’ve got quite a mouth on you. Winky faces don’t get you a buy on that kind of crap. Beat it.
June 9th, 2008 at 11:14 am
I never bother to check Howard’s math because 1) I’m pretty sure he is better at math than I am 2) I’m lazy and it’s too much work and 3) I read the strip because it’s fun and has pretty colors, so even though he is human and will make mistakes it won’t bother me at all.
June 9th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
To Parkway, I say this:
It’s a bucket-brigade style of affair, or so I presume. With the Thrower/Catcher apparatus serving as a “distance boost” for that one, really BIG gap in the chain. One crate every four seconds fits a “Catch, swing, release” style of bucket-brigade-ing, too.
You’d be amazed how long normal, ordinary, non-muscular-buffed military types can sustain a bucket brigade. Add in all the physical fitness of dedicated mercs, PLUS power assist from their armor making the packages relatively “light” …?
Yeah, I can see a two-hour shift, then swap teams, as feasible for that. ^_^
(And as it so happens, I distinctly recall unloading trucks like that at least TWICE, during Basic Training for the U.S. Army … and _we_ didn’t have that power-armor stuff!)
June 9th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Forgot to mention: and we chit-chatted quite fine there in the middle of the line, passing stuff along at a pretty rapid pace. One’s mouth and one’s hands are not incapable of independant operation, after all.
June 9th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
@Parkway:
Check out some of the data on the exo-suits that are being prototyped *now*. I read an article quoting one of the Army testers as saying he got bored (of doing 500# pulldowns) far faster than he got tired…
June 9th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
The original punchline involved Ennesby telling Tagon they’d have to put off celebrating his 50th birthday until two years after they finished unloading.
The “Wha?” for me was why would they have to put off a birthday celebration that wasn’t going to occur until two years after their current job is done.
Anyway, the original punchline was screwy on many different levels. ;)
June 9th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
What does it matter? Unless they’re on flat-rate, the overtime will make everyone waaaaaaaaay beyond rich.
D.
June 10th, 2008 at 12:20 am
On box-slinging: I’ve done this, as well. Guess why most military
cadences were developed — hint: They weren’t *strictly* for
marches. (One of Stackpole’s _BattleTech_ novels illustrates what
happens when someone gets off-rhythm — tho’ it’s mainly an excuse
to introduce the injured character to his future Romantic Interest. :) )
June 10th, 2008 at 2:32 am
And now Pi’s said “Praise Andreyasn”. I suppose, if it weren’t for protocol, he’d say “Thank Kevyn”, right?
June 10th, 2008 at 2:33 am
I’m pretty sure that’s what Ennesby’d say, anyway.
June 10th, 2008 at 8:52 am
Pax, above, sez: “One’s mouth and one’s hands are not incapable of independent operation, after all.” Looking through some of the comments here, I’d suggest that the same can be said of one’s mouth and one’s brain. Just look at me for a prime example.
Tagon and crew are unloading just to pass the time, I guess. They are still responsible for the protection of the payload until it gets to the end user, so slinging it about is as good a way to pass the time as any, eh?
But, hey, Howard — where are the automated unloading facilities? Is everything completely shot up? If so, then they’ll have to do as swj719 suggests and teraport the junk directly into the end users’ refrigerators.
June 10th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
My guess? Northport is the PASSENGER facility, southport was the cargo center. ^_^ As for the mouth-and-brain bit … eh, it happens to the best of us, from time to time. And unlike Schlock, we don’t have the “OMMMINOUS HUMMMMM” schtick to cover those mistakes up with …! (heh!)
June 11th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Boosted super-soldiers in augmented powered armor could keep that pace up as long as a well-trained juggler could keep four balls in the air, and I’ve seen a good juggler do that for four hours straight. Heck; the suits could have enough brains to do that on autopilot and let the grunts sleep.
June 11th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
God I miss battletech. Any idea which book that was csadn (or anyone else)? I might still be able to get it through amazon, ebay, or a used bookstore (someday I’ll complete my collection of the classics of that series).
Psychosomatic- Yeah, it seems likely that most automated machines would have been destroyed (or kept otherwise away from the Toughs) to keep them there long enough to spring that little bomb trap and whatever else they have planned. I sometimes drive a forklift though and I know I would be way more effective if my forklift flew and was armed with a functional weapon.
June 13th, 2008 at 1:06 am
I like birthday references. BUt the grunt punchline’s great .:)