{"id":7320,"date":"2010-12-11T03:00:32","date_gmt":"2010-12-11T08:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/?p=7320"},"modified":"2010-12-11T03:00:32","modified_gmt":"2010-12-11T08:00:32","slug":"a-matter-of-perspective-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/7320","title":{"rendered":"A Matter of Perspective"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/thevirtuosi.blogspot.com\/2010\/12\/law-and-large-numbers.html\">The Virtuosi:  The Law and Large Numbers<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The US budget, deficit and the <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/7251\">ludicrous &#8220;Youcut&#8221; program<\/a> (which has been rightly lambasted almost everywhere in the science blogohedron)<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I just want to point out again, claiming that cutting NPR funding makes a dent in the US budget is similar to claiming you&#8217;ve moved closer to Orlando (while in LA) by crossing the room<\/p>\n<p>\u2026<\/p>\n<p>In my undergraduate physics lab, the instructor had a mantra: &#8220;A number without context is meaningless&#8221;. Now, he originally meant the statement to be a lesson on how important it is to quote errors on your measurements, but I think I can adapt it to apply to giving out numbers like 7 billion without a sense of scale.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(I think the motivation for &#8220;cutting NPR&#8221; has less to do with budget than ideology, and NPR doesn&#8217;t actually get any direct appropriations from the government, but it&#8217;s still a nice example of scale)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Virtuosi: The Law and Large Numbers The US budget, deficit and the ludicrous &#8220;Youcut&#8221; program (which has been rightly lambasted almost everywhere in the science blogohedron) I just want to point out again, claiming that cutting NPR funding makes &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/7320\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-math","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7320\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}