In the UK this shape (product of three intervals) is usually called a 'cuboid' (and is taught as such in primary schools). Consequently, when a (foreign, possibly Eastern European) professor used the term 'rectilinear parallelepiped' to refer to the shape in a Cambridge undergraduate lecture, it appeared somewhat circumlocutory. Ever since, I've had friends humorously refer to the small cuboids of flapjack and millionaire's shortbread as 'parallelepipeds', in the sense of: A: "I'm feeling hungry; shall we get snacks from Sainsbury's?" B: "Sure, what were you thinking?" A: "Parallelepipeds, maybe?" B: "Great!" On a more serious note, I've often seen 'brick' used for the n-dimensional generalisation (an arbitrary finite product of intervals). Best wishes, Adam P. Goucher
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2019 at 1:44 AM From: "Andy Latto" <andy.latto@pobox.com> To: math-fun <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Subject: Re: [math-fun] What is the probability that a randomly thrown polyhedral die will land on a given face?
On Wed, Jan 30, 2019 at 8:00 PM Fred Lunnon <fred.lunnon@gmail.com> wrote:
<< The word my father taught me for the three-dimensional analogue of a rectangle is "parallelopiped" >> I don't think so. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallelepiped
Which is presumably why I was taught "rectangular parallelepiped" as a child, which was fun to say, but certainly didn't achieve the goal of "a shorter and punchier word than 'rectangular solid' for this common concept!"
I suggest "oblong" is the word required.
But I've seen this used to refer to 2-dimensional as well as three-dimensional shapes, as well as to non-rectalinear shapes.
Andy
WFL
On 1/30/19, Mike Speciner <ms@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
Actually, it's parallelepiped.
On 30-Jan-19 18:19, Allan Wechsler wrote:
The word my father taught me for the three-dimensional analogue of a rectangle is "parallelopiped". Some author, I can't remember who, writes "2-box" and "3-box" and the like.
On Wed, Jan 30, 2019 at 6:07 PM Dan Asimov <dasimov@earthlink.net> wrote:
Good point!* I will now try to find if something comparable has been done for more general polyhedra.
—Dan
—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— * If you've never tried it, get a fat mass-market paperback (i.e., small format, c. 4"x7"), put a rubber band about it to hold it together, and note the disparate efforts needed in order to get it to spin 360º midair about the three axes perpendicular to the faces of this rectangular solid.**
** "Rectangular solid"??? Surely there is a shorter and punchier word for this common concept!
Andy Latto <andy.latto@pobox.com> écrit: ----- Assuming the die has 3 distinct moments, there are two stable ways to have the die spinning as it is tossed. I don't see any reason to expect the probabilities will be the same for these two different ways to throw the die. Or the unstable ways, but those are harder for the thrower to reproduce accurately. -----
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-- Andy.Latto@pobox.com
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