By: Blonde Two
I had an interesting maths moment yesterday. When you write an expedition route card, you have to put your maths head on before you start. Clearly, when your head is Blonde, this can cause a problem; there is usually only room for one head on each neck.
I was adjusting a route card that had been written for a team walking at 4 kilometres per hour in order to make it suit our 55 Mile team who can walk at twice that speed. We had agreed on 6 kph as a compromise. This was fine but my poor head that has learnt walking times for 4 kph by rote and used them so many times that they are engrained on my psyche, could not make the massive leap in mathematical calculation.
Those of you who can actually do maths will have already spotted where this is leading; I had no idea at the time and had to dig out a calculator to help me with the sums. I got approximately half way through the route card before I realised that, at 6 kilometres per hour, the sums were really, really easy. So easy, in fact, that they were non-sums. I think this is something to do with the relationship between the number of minutes in an hour and the number 6 (I could be wrong). Anyway, it goes something like this: a distance of 6 kilometres will take you one hour (60 minutes), a distance of 3 kilometres will take you half an hour (30 minutes) and a distance of 4.3454234543 kilometres (our youngsters are very accurate about distance) will take you 43.454234543 minutes.
I asked the 55 Mile team about this phenomenon later and they said that they had worked it out ages ago and always wrote their routes at 6 kph because it was so easy to work the times out. There is a good reason that I leave much of the route card writing to them these days!
Congratulations. You risked not having a single comment by raising the scaly head of mathematics but I can’t allow you to stand alone and isolated. From time to time I’ve issued a post about maths (once a hysteresis curve with some attached calculus) and frankly I didn’t care whether or not anyone responded; I wanted to demonstrate I was Renaissance Man and that I’ve done other things than read Daniel Deronda. Now you can join me and we can together prove that our club – the New Renaissance – is non-discriminatory. Your first job will be membership secretary and you’ll have my permission to kick out any applicant who can’t do simultaneous equations. Or, if you prefer, put them to the sword.
As a non-math (Yank speak) person, I loved both posts. The Renaissance Man/Daniel Deronda comment had me rolling…
Didn’t want to join anyway 🙂 what’s Calculus? And what’s a hysteresis curve? You may have noticed that my sister got the maths gene and I got the walking legs.
Please, what is 6kph in mph?
Divide by 1.6! Nearly four. I of course was lucky enough to inherit both genes!
Ta everso nicely thank-you.
Of course you did!
Nearly 4 mph is pretty good going over hill and dale, even given the propensity for jelly-bog-running!
w.r.t. (maths standard abbreviation for ‘with respect to’) Genes, the maths ones came out of the blue yonder, but the walking ones – Jean’s, surely, as in Auntie Jean’s? (via your grandparents who spent their youths on walking holidays!) But you’re right about jeans not being suitable walking wear (previous blog) – the seams are far too harsh and they absorb too much moisture. There – what a lot of Jeans/Genes talk! As for attaching calculus – who would want to make their back pack heavier by attaching small stones? Hysteresis is the dependence of a system not only on its current environment but also on its past environment. (Wikipedia) Quite suitable for a lover of Dartmoor by the sound of it!
Do hotrocks qualify as calculus? I like one of those ready for use in my backpack and I transfer it to my organ bag on practice days – tis cold in them there churches!