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Double Bass Puh-lease!

#41
I always understood it that things measurable in ordinal numbers (things you can count) can be described as 'more' and 'fewer', and things that are measurable by mass or volume are 'more' and 'less'.

Fewer than 6 and more than 10
Less than a gallon but more than a pound.
 
#48
Wil Davis said:
"…I went an' seen it…" ????

"…I dun went an' seen it" surely…

:)

- Wil
Click to expand...


****ing expatriate Brit *******.

You are right of course, but for one thing: most of us shoeless folk down here can spell "done" even if we don't always know how to use it correctly. :spit:
 
#49
Ray Parker said:
I always understood it that things measurable in ordinal numbers (things you can count) can be described as 'more' and 'fewer', and things that are measurable by mass or volume are 'more' and 'less'.

Fewer than 6 and more than 10
Less than a gallon but more than a pound.
Click to expand...
This is what I thought. However, there is still a lot of gray area for me. In math we learned about greater than and less than, which certainly have to do with numbers. 6 is less than 10. Obviously you say "less than a gallon of water", but what about "less than 6 gallons of water"? Are you then dealing with the number 6, or the volume of water it represents? If I dumped out 1 gallon, what would I have - 1 gallon less than before? If I dumped out 2 gallons, would it be 2 gallons fewer than before? And what do you say,

A. 5 gallons of water is less than 6
B. 5 gallons of water are less than 6
C. 5 gallons of water is fewer than 6
D. 5 gallons of water are fewer than 6
E. None of the above
F. T-Bal, get a life, you anal retentive freak
 
#50
I once saw a t-shirt that had the question, "Is Anal Rentative hyphenated?"

Anyhow, I think all of the examples you gave are correct, but they all say different things:

A: 5 and 6 represent volume
B: 5 of the gallons are Canadian? The other six are US?
C: 5 and 6 represent ordinals and your grammar is bad.
D: 5 and 6 represent ordinals.

:)
 
#52
Slight clarification....countable things are integral (as in integers), not ordinal. Integral scales apply to phenomena where the units of measure tranfer consistently from application to application. In counting, two basses are always exactly one more than one bass. In volume of liquid (another integer scale) two liters are exactly one more than one liter. Length on a ruler is integral, one cm is always one cm regardless of what is measured.

Ordinal scales denote order, as in 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or higher-lower, bigger-smaller, by some indeterminate or flexible amount. Perceived loudness is, as best, an ordinal measurement. The physical sound transmitted to the perceiving person can be measured on an integral scale (intensity in decibels), but the loudness judgement of the person is measured on an ordinal scale (louder-softer). Even if the person assigns a number to the perceived loudness (e.g. that note was a 4, but the last one was a 2), those numbers are ordinal at best because it is highly unlikely (from person to person or time to time) that the 4-level note has exactly twice the sound intensity of the 2-level note.
 
#54
ee-san said:
Slight clarification....countable things are integral (as in integers), not ordinal. Integral scales apply to phenomena where the units of measure tranfer consistently from application to application. In counting, two basses are always exactly one more than one bass. In volume of liquid (another integer scale) two liters are exactly one more than one liter. Length on a ruler is integral, one cm is always one cm regardless of what is measured.

Ordinal scales denote order, as in 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or higher-lower, bigger-smaller, by some indeterminate or flexible amount. Perceived loudness is, as best, an ordinal measurement. The physical sound transmitted to the perceiving person can be measured on an integral scale (intensity in decibels), but the loudness judgement of the person is measured on an ordinal scale (louder-softer). Even if the person assigns a number to the perceived loudness (e.g. that note was a 4, but the last one was a 2), those numbers are ordinal at best because it is highly unlikely (from person to person or time to time) that the 4-level note has exactly twice the sound intensity of the 2-level note.
Click to expand...

Measurement theory can get into theoretical math pretty quick, and I promise I won't go there. But the preceding post has required me to get deeply, deeply nerdy on y'all and to point out that there are such things as levels of measurement, as so:

  1. Nominal - nothing here but the ability to discriminate between and apple and an orange. It's numerical because all counting starts here;
  2. Ordinal - the preceding is true but there is also an ordered relation 'twixt elements measured on this type of scale; "greater than" and "less than" is all we know;
  3. Interval - all the preceding is true but the scale is now divided into units of standard size, enabling addition and subtraction to be performed. Classic example is any temperature scale except Kelvin; and,
  4. Ratio - if all the preceding is true and you have a true zero -- an absence of quantity -- on your scale, the scale is at the ratio level of measurement. You can perform multiplicative operations using ratio. Because degrees F temperature is interval, not ratio, you can say 80 degrees is 40 degrees warmer than 40 degrees, but you can't say that 80 is twice as warm as 40. That would make you an ignorant fool, something which seems not to prevent many journalists from making said error.

Your words for these concepts will vary depending on when you learned them and what branch of science was beating on you. Eggier heads than yours or mine have got this all worked out, though. Bottom line? Mathematics, it seems, is legitimate.
 
#59
Ray Parker said:
I once saw a t-shirt that had the question, "Is Anal Rentative hyphenated?" :)
Click to expand...

Maybe.

I'm uncertain of this specifically, but typically if used as a compound modifier, the answer would be yes.

As in:

The anal-retentive piano player.

In other cases:

The piano is anal retentive.


And while we are at it, A Tennessism: Libul

Used in a sentence:

Charlie, don't you go messin' with that mule. She's libul to kick you.
 

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