Game time for you driving commuters

Poststructural Pub
1

This is a new game that commuters are participating in: Roadside Math.

http://www.roadsignmath.com/

Looks like a way to beat the boredom.

An example:

Give Me Liberty

Give me Liberty, or give me a square root! How appropriate that this winning mathematically significant road sign with Liberty is from Pennsylvania. This is another sign from David Slauenwhite.

Two number signs almost always have to use functions that only require one number and this is no exception. It’s easy to try to make this 42 = 16 but that is not a valid solution, there is no 2 on this sign anywhere for the power. However, the opposite using the square root is completely within the rules.

SqRt(16) = 4

This sign is found in Pennsylvania on PA 414 West in Canton, immediately west of PA 14. The GPS coordinates for this sign are approximately N41 39 10.7 W76 51 09.6.



I walk to work so I can’t play and there are no road signs on the river I kayak.

MarkB

2

Mark. You’re a geek.

:stuck_out_tongue:

Robin

3

It’s interesting to note the difference in road signs, and house numbering, in the UK, USA and Ireland (three countries I’ve visited).

In the UK, junctions off motorways (similar to interstates) are numbered from 1 up, when the road is first built. Of course this doesn’t allow for future changes, so we end up with junction 8/9 on the M4 when two close junctions were combined, and junction 4A where the M25 crosses.

In the States junctions off interstates are numbered by the miles from one end, I think this is right), so you have a roungh idea of the limes you will cover, and new junctions can be added as required without messing up the numbering system.

In Ireland, roadsigns (or at least ones I saw) show the furthest away place at the top, so you have to get used to reading signs from the bottom up if you want to know what town you are coming to next. Additionally there is the confusion of kilometres and miles, with some distances measured in one, and some in another.

The UK house numbering system is similarly inflexible, so when a big house is broken into flats, they end up numbered 13A, 13B etc. Due to the fact that postman are required to be illiterate or nearsighted by law (apparently), this results in a lot of mis-delivered post, complicated by the fact that there may be many roads of the same name in London, distinguishable only by their postcodes which you are required to write on letters, but the post office are not required to read.

The States plan for expansion, so house numbers range in the thousands even on a short street.

In Ireland, an old friend of mine never had a number or even a name on his house. I had to address letters to “Richard Mackey, Ballygarven, Co Cork”, and the postman would deliver them.

4

A splendid game. We’ll give it a try on our upcoming journey.

5

Postmen usually know who live in a given townland. My own townland has about twelve houses, all sharing exactly the same address. The system usually works fine, once a letter to me addressed to my name, ireland arrived on my doorstep. On the otehr hand i had a friend from Co Waterford, she complained a lot of families in her town shared the same surname, O’Connor, and how frustrating it was that all cards ‘O’Connor family so and so town’ made the rounds, read by all before arriving at the right family.