[Sca-cooks] On pins and angels....

[Terry Decker]

Could be, but you are suggesting a greater precision than a Fermi problem
produces.  Order, the way you are using it, means the number of elements in
a finite group.  The answers to a Fermi problem may be infinite, while the
goal is to produce an approximate answer or range of answers that satisfy
the conditions of the question within the practical observations of the
variables.  For example, the classic question of how many tennis balls will
fit in a suitcase is a Fermi problem.

You bother with calculus so you can create very strange financial deals
which are so complex no one can understand them other than a mathematician
and are so alluring that you make your profits on the sale percentage
leaving someone else to make a killing if they really work or take a bath if
they don't.

BTW, Steve Wolfram has written a book on doing science without mathematics.
He is one of the seminal researchers in chaos theory and the author of the
Mathematica software suite.

Bear


>
>> Only if you approach it as a theologian.  Looking at
>> it from a physicists
>> point of view, it is a Fermi problem with a particle
>> of indeterminate
>> physical properties in a small but variable area.
>
>Isn't that where orders of numbers come in? Something
>like, "The number of piano tuners in NYC" ?
>
>Phlip, who never did figure out why anybody bothered
>with calculus- after all, it all winds up being won.....
>