Stupid Things I Have Heard At Work Part Deux 4

[AnotherHiggins]

OK, I'll start.

A Former supervisor at my company (thankfully I never reported to her) raised Jack Russell Terriers. She was discussing it with a group of us in the office. Someone asked her what the tails look like before folks lop them off. She said that the tails were often short or malformed. She went on to explain how one day they would be born without the tails.

I must have given her a strange look, because she cocked her head to one side and said to me in a supremely condescending tone, “It’s called evolution, John.”

I laughed out loud. I thought she was kidding.

She went on, “We keep cutting their tails off before they breed, so eventually they won’t even be born with tails.”

I couldn’t believe it, but the group actually started debating whether this made sense, with only a couple of us dissenting. I tried to explain that evolution can occur because of mutation, but not mutilation, that the tails were malformed because Jack Russells simply aren’t bred for nice tails so dogs with ugly tails but other desirable characteristics were allowed to breed.

She didn’t get it.

I ended the discussion by asking the supervisor if her ears were pierced. She confirmed that they were. I asked how many generations of ear-pierced women it would take before their daughters started being born with holes in their ears.
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NOTE: I do not wish to spark a debate about evolution. Dogs are bred for certain characteristics, that’s all I'm talking about.

[tt]_____
[blue]-John[/blue][/tt]

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[NewToCR]

I can see underarm hair to be transplanted ONLY to a places where we don't want those either LOL

 

[PaulTEG]

I'm gonna stop now ...

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[jebenson]

Another one:

I used to work in a government agency that performed criminal justice data analysis for our state legislature, criminal justice system, etc. We had just completed an analysis of parole board members' voting patterns and had made a major presentation to the parole board.

My coworker who was in charge of the presenatation recieved a call from a board member who had a few questions about the analysis. As a little background, this particular parole board member has a PhD from a major university. I could tell from my coworker's responses that the board member was not happy with the results of the analysis, and was quizzing my coworker as to methodology, assumptions, etc.

At one point my coworker said something to the effect of, "Well, the mean approval rate for violent offenders was calculated by.... I'm sorry? Well, a mean and an average are the same thing. Mean is another word for average."

This PhD educated parole board member, who held sway over people's freedom, had asked my coworker, "Why did you use means for your analysis instead of using averages?"

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[sleipnir214]

I remember reading once that during the Renaissance some European universities had traditions that PhD candidates had to stand in a public place for a certain amount of time, answering any question anyone asked.

I think it's unreasonable to assume in the modern age that "PhD educated" means "knows about everything". If the board member in question got his/her PhD in English, there's a good chance he/she had never taken a college math course higher than bonehead college algebra and had never used any of what little mathematics he/she ever learned.

If the board-member's PhD was in mathematics, it would be a different thing and a much more interesting story.

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[grande]

sleipnir214,
Where I live (Ontario, Canada), we get taught mean, mode, and median in Grade 9 (Possibly earlier). There's no reason why he shouldn't've known what a mean was.

-------------------------
Just call me Captain Awesome.

 

[Stella740pl]

Well, if the board member got his/her high school education in a language other than English, and the PhD was in some area of humanities, there could be translation of terminilogy confusion.

 

[CajunCenturion]

==> "Why did you use means for your analysis instead of using averages?"
Because the data set did not fit a normal distribution, so using an average might be misleading. That's why I choose to use a geometric mean, (or harmonic mean, or power mean) for these calculations. Generally speaking, only the 'arithmetic mean' is synomous with average.

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[Toshilap]

PhD educated" means "knows about everything"?
Isn't it why title goes PhD in...(math, English etc...) so they don't have to answer unrelated questions?

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I finally got it all together and forgot where I put it.

 

[Turkbear]

Hi,( an old joke follows):

Actually, PhD has a different meaning to some :
The first degree is

B.S. ( and we know what that means)
Then
M.S. ( more of the same)
Finally,
Ph.D. ( Piled High and Deep)






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[CajunCenturion]

Actually, the modern concept of the Ph.D. is one who has done original research in his or her field of choice. I wouldn't say it's "knows about everying", but rather, "knows everying about" their research area.

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[sleipnir214]

grande:
I was probably taught about means and averages, etc, in the 9th grade, too. That was, however, more than a quarter of a century ago, so I have no idea whether I was taught it then or not. And if I hadn't used that knowledge since then, I certainly would not remember it -- which I why I chose the specific example of someone with a PhD in English. I can see it well within the bounds of possibility that a PhD in English that has little use for mathematics might get confused about the difference between a mean and an average, particularly when a synonym for average in this context is arithmetic mean.



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[jsaxe]

PhD=Push Hard, Dammit!

jsaxe

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."
Hunter S. Thompson (R.I.P. Doc)

 

[jerryreeve]

OK I have two stories here one mine one truly stupid:

I was working at an office where two people had to share one PC between them. There was a swing arm between the desks that swung the keyboard and monitor back and forth between them. This arm was spring loaded to keep the heavy 19" monitor up. I got called to swap out the monitor that was on the swing arm, when I pulled the old heavy monitor off of the arm apparently the arm stuck in place for a few seconds, just long enough for me to get the monitor completely out of the way and then the swing arm launched the keyboard, ripped the cord off completely and sent the keyboard about 15 feet.

I was a "Small Compauter support" NCO in an Air Force unit in NY when we got a call from one of the Guard units that worked with us. The Colonel called us to let us know that it was a "Bad idea" while formating floppies in both A and B drives (that long ago) to use using "FORMAT *.*" as the command. It would format A drive, then B drive, then C drive etc. .....

----------------------------
JerryReeve
Communications Systems Int'l
com-sys.com

 

[BJCooperIT]

I got this from Reader's Digest:

One of my college friends asked a group of us for advice on organizing his final report for the year. "Why don't you use Roman numerals to head the different sections?" another friend suggested. "I already thought of that," he replied. "But my keyboard doesn't have Roman numerals on it."

[sup]Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.[/sup][sup] ~George Bernard Shaw[/sup]
Consultant Developer/Analyst Oracle, Forms, Reports & PL/SQL (Windows)
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[GwydionM]

Great story, jerryreeve. Myself, I never worked on a computer that had an 'A' drive. My PC experience began in the era when floppy disks had ceased to flop.

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An old man who lives in the UK

 

[SamBones]

Heh, I started working in computers before PCs had a C: drive!

 

[Turkbear]

Hi,
Newbie...
I started before there were PCs - just dumb terminals and Mainframes



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[DataDog]

Who else remembers drum disk drives? core memeory? IBM 80 column punch cards? vacuum tube flip flops?

DataDog
'Failure Is Not An Option'

 

[2ffat]

Ha! I started with punch cards and had to wait until the wee hours in the morning to run programs.


James P. Cottingham
-----------------------------------------
[sup]I'm number 1,229!
I'm number 1,229![/sup]

 

[BJCooperIT]

Card interpreters and 12-2-9 punches? Punched card wreaths?

[sup]Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.[/sup][sup] ~George Bernard Shaw[/sup]
Consultant Developer/Analyst Oracle, Forms, Reports & PL/SQL (Windows)
My website: Emu Products Plus