Re: [math-fun] English sequence
Gareth wrote: << On Thursday 15 January 2009, Veit Elser wrote:
This type of question reminds me of my son's first experience learning to count: he got caught in an infinite loop! ... EIGHT NINE TEN ELEVEN EIGHT NINE ...
My daughter recently went 1,2,3,...,13,14,16,16,16,16,16,... . I assume some 4-bit counter overflowed and scrobbled a linked-list pointer, or something.
There's a vignette of a small child counting birds on a wire: "1, 4, 3, 9, 12, 11, 2. That's funny, it looks like more than 2." --Dan _____________________________________________________________________ "It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that certain je ne sais quoi." --Peter Schickele
On Thursday 15 January 2009, Dan Asimov wrote: [me:]
My daughter recently went 1,2,3,...,13,14,16,16,16,16,16,... . I assume some 4-bit counter overflowed and scrobbled a linked-list pointer, or something.
[Dan:]
There's a vignette of a small child counting birds on a wire: "1, 4, 3, 9, 12, 11, 2. That's funny, it looks like more than 2."
Ha. (But my daughter could count well beyond 2 before she had any inkling of notions like "looks like more than 2"; for some time she'd say "2!" when asked how many of anything there were (if more than one). -- g
My younger son, now two and a half, can count at least into the teens before things get muddled. But when you ask him to count something, there are two alternatives. Sometimes he'll do bijective enumeration, pointing to each item in turn and saying the next number, at the end announcing the correct total. Other times he will just count -- that is, recite numbers until he decides to stop, sometimes including pointing at things, perhaps multiple times. But when he "just counts", I can say "Can you count them *carefully*?" -- and he'll do bijective enumeration every time. --Michael On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 7:01 PM, Gareth McCaughan < gareth.mccaughan@pobox.com> wrote:
On Thursday 15 January 2009, Dan Asimov wrote:
[me:]
My daughter recently went 1,2,3,...,13,14,16,16,16,16,16,... . I assume some 4-bit counter overflowed and scrobbled a linked-list pointer, or something.
[Dan:]
There's a vignette of a small child counting birds on a wire: "1, 4, 3, 9, 12, 11, 2. That's funny, it looks like more than 2."
Ha. (But my daughter could count well beyond 2 before she had any inkling of notions like "looks like more than 2"; for some time she'd say "2!" when asked how many of anything there were (if more than one).
-- g
_______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
-- It is very dark and after 2000. If you continue you are likely to be eaten by a bleen.
At this juncture I can't resist observing that "bijective enumeration" is a very primitive counting technique. People well-practised in counting sets of cardinal up to (say) a few tens simply glance once at the whole assemblage, enumerating it instantaneously. Such a facility is necessary in order for example to count sheep in a field, or ducks on a pond --- neither of which are in the habit of waiting around obligingly for any such pedestrian procedure as bijection! WFL On 1/16/09, Michael Kleber <michael.kleber@gmail.com> wrote:
My younger son, now two and a half, can count at least into the teens before things get muddled. But when you ask him to count something, there are two alternatives. Sometimes he'll do bijective enumeration, pointing to each item in turn and saying the next number, at the end announcing the correct total. Other times he will just count -- that is, recite numbers until he decides to stop, sometimes including pointing at things, perhaps multiple times. But when he "just counts", I can say "Can you count them *carefully*?" -- and he'll do bijective enumeration every time.
--Michael
On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 7:01 PM, Gareth McCaughan < gareth.mccaughan@pobox.com> wrote:
On Thursday 15 January 2009, Dan Asimov wrote:
[me:]
My daughter recently went 1,2,3,...,13,14,16,16,16,16,16,... . I assume some 4-bit counter overflowed and scrobbled a linked-list pointer, or something.
[Dan:]
There's a vignette of a small child counting birds on a wire: "1, 4, 3, 9, 12, 11, 2. That's funny, it looks like more than 2."
Ha. (But my daughter could count well beyond 2 before she had any inkling of notions like "looks like more than 2"; for some time she'd say "2!" when asked how many of anything there were (if more than one).
-- g
_______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
-- It is very dark and after 2000. If you continue you are likely to be eaten by a bleen.
_______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
participants (4)
-
Dan Asimov -
Fred lunnon -
Gareth McCaughan -
Michael Kleber