[HN Gopher] 500-year-old maths problem turns out to apply to cof...
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500-year-old maths problem turns out to apply to coffee and clocks
Author : gumby
Score : 115 points
Date : 2024-05-17 17:30 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newscientist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newscientist.com)
| brudgers wrote:
| https://archive.ph/aQGyH
| ffhhj wrote:
| The butt pattern.
| banish-m4 wrote:
| Finally, a mathematical solution to why coffee makes me poop.
| It's clearly subliminal messaging.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| I always assumed despite the slight laxative effect of
| coffee, the real reason is most people are just morning
| poopers and morning coffee drinkers.
| nullbio wrote:
| I think it's because it pulls water into the intestines,
| which helps you poop easier.
| euroderf wrote:
| As it's a diuretic I'd say it pushes water, but yeah.
| idiotlogical wrote:
| I noticed years ago while feeding my newborn that she would
| chug some delicious warm milk and fill up that diaper.
| Since then I always figured the coffee phenomenon was
| related.
|
| Drinking plain warm/hot water can trigger the same response
| so it is arguably not just coffee.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| I vary my routine a lot, so I am pretty sure that it is the
| liquid coffee here that is the trigger. Not just caffeine
| because I normally use caffeine pills instead.
| schmidt_fifty wrote:
| It's hard to discount other factors but I certainly notice
| a difference switching from water to coffee.
| astrange wrote:
| It's a pretty strong effect for me, but IIRC there are
| multiple causes, like that it's hot + acidic + caffeinated.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| On some days I'm 8-10 times a day coffee drinker and on the
| same days I turn out to be 4-5 times a day pooper. I
| suspect there is some connection.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| I can drink as much coffee as I want and I experience no
| laxative effects. But if I eat some chilli peppers next
| morning I feel like I am going to explode.
| bruce511 wrote:
| Correlation <> causation.
|
| Most people tend to poop around the same each day. Largely
| because we tent to eat around the same time each day.
|
| Most people tend to drink coffee at the same times each day.
| Naturally for a bunch of folk one will co-incide with the
| other, at least some days a week.
|
| The added factor is that most people (who drink coffee) drink
| multiple times per day, allowing for more correlation
| opportunities.
|
| But mostly what causes pooping is eating (he says,
| speculating, with no data to back it up.)
| ErikBjare wrote:
| All stimulants cause this, it is well known.
| gradschoolfail wrote:
| Epicycloid -> Antikythera gearing -> planetary epicycles
|
| https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...
|
| The mathematics of the epicycloid : a historical journey with a
| modern perspective
| barfbagginus wrote:
| See the Wikipedia page for satisfying proofs of the Cycloid's
| Involute, Arc Length, Area, and Pendulum properties. The involute
| property has a particularly neat proof, and it gives us a neat
| proof of the arc length property, and a shockingly elegant
| construction for the pendulum motion:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycloid
|
| The article about cardioids has a very elegant proof of coffee
| cup caustic reflection property:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardioid
| ykonstant wrote:
| Here is an amusing related phenomenon: if you look at dynamical
| system induced by multiplication by 3/2 on the binary digits of a
| seed and cut a fixed window, you get the following graph family:
| https://ykonstant1.github.io/images/trans_limit.png
|
| More generally, exponential maps on finite structures produce
| these reflection-like envelopes.
| adamddev1 wrote:
| In "An Introduction to Mathematics", by A. N. Whitehead, he makes
| a wonderful argument for the "usefulness" of pure math. With many
| fascinating examples like this he describes how when people work
| to solve purely mathematical problems without any "real-world
| application," they actually end up having incredibly useful
| applications in real life situations down the road. But where
| people are limited only to seemingly useful, "practical" math
| problems, they don't end up making the progress that brings great
| practical advances in the end.
| adonovan wrote:
| I just finished G. H. Hardy's celebrated "A Mathematician's
| Apology". He describes "useful" math such as calculus as "on
| the whole, rather dull", and contrasts it with the "real" math
| of Euler, Fermat, and Gauss, which he finds "almost wholly
| 'useless'"; he adds that the great achievements of applied math
| --relativity and quantum mechanics--are "almost as useless as
| number theory".
|
| He was prudent to add "at present [1940], at any rate": the
| phone on which I am typing wouldn't work at all without number
| theory, relativity, and quantum mechanics!
| jprete wrote:
| I have a vague sense that mathematicians take some pride in
| the uselessness of their discipline, even when it's the exact
| opposite of useless. Maybe because the more useless the
| mathematics appears to be, the more it must be motivated by
| the pure love of the subject?
| vector_spaces wrote:
| With regard to the "pride in uselessness" thing, I caution
| you against generalizing here. Different people get into
| math for different reasons, but I would say that all the
| pure mathematicians I know of are motivated principally by
| interest in the problems they care about, and don't think
| too much about questions of purity.
|
| There's a nice quote from Courant in his "Introduction to
| Calculus & Analysis" where he warns against "smug purism",
| exhorting students to draw inspiration and insight from
| other fields because it will make them better
| mathematicians. I think this is the attitude that I
| encounter most frequently among mature, pure
| mathematicians.
|
| Chebyshev in particular was known not only for working on
| problems that had engineering applications, but for using
| methods and techniques from engineering to inform his
| approach to pure math problems. As the founder of the St.
| Petersburg school of mathematics, this approach had broad
| impacts on (later) Soviet mathematics and global
| mathematics as students brought up in this tradition went
| on to train later generations of mathematicians around the
| world.
| boringg wrote:
| Why is it a maths problem and not a math problem?
| innocenat wrote:
| "maths" is British English for "math" in US English.
| onionisafruit wrote:
| .
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Why is it a maths problem and not a math problem?
|
| Because what Americans call 'math' is called 'maths' in many
| parts of the English-speaking world.
| gist wrote:
| Similar in US we typically say 'the University' however on HN
| I frequently see just 'University'.
|
| (Note I had the same thought as you but assumed (w/o a
| search) it was for the reason stated by your reply).
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