5 ms·
500-year-old maths problem turns out to apply to coffee and clocks
- brudgers 2y agohttps://archive.ph/aQGyH https://archive.ph/aQGyH
- ffhhj 2y agoThe butt pattern.
- banish-m4 2y agoFinally, a mathematical solution to why coffee makes me poop. It's clearly subliminal messaging.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- IncreasePosts 2y agoI always assumed despite the slight laxative effect of coffee, the real reason is most people are just morning poopers and morning coffee drinkers.
- nullbio 2y agoI think it's because it pulls water into the intestines, which helps you poop easier.
- euroderf 2y agoAs it's a diuretic I'd say it pushes water, but yeah.
- idiotlogical 2y agoI noticed years ago while feeding my newborn that she would chug some delicious warm milk and fill up that diaper. Since then I always figured the coffee phenomenon was related. Drinking plain warm/hot water can trigger the same response so it is arguably not just coffee.
- mewpmewp2 2y agoI vary my routine a lot, so I am pretty sure that it is the liquid coffee here that is the trigger. Not just caffeine because I normally use caffeine pills instead.
- schmidt_fifty 2y agoIt's hard to discount other factors but I certainly notice a difference switching from water to coffee.
- astrange 2y agoIt's a pretty strong effect for me, but IIRC there are multiple causes, like that it's hot + acidic + caffeinated.
- alexey-salmin 2y agoOn some days I'm 8-10 times a day coffee drinker and on the same days I turn out to be 4-5 times a day pooper. I suspect there is some connection.
- DeathArrow 2y agoI can drink as much coffee as I want and I experience no laxative effects. But if I eat some chilli peppers next morning I feel like I am going to explode.
- bruce511 2y agoCorrelation <> causation. Most people tend to poop around the same each day. Largely because we tent to eat around the same time each day. Most people tend to drink coffee at the same times each day. Naturally for a bunch of folk one will co-incide with the other, at least some days a week. The added factor is that most people (who drink coffee) drink multiple times per day, allowing for more correlation opportunities. But mostly what causes pooping is eating (he says, speculating, with no data to back it up.)
- ErikBjare 2y agoAll stimulants cause this, it is well known.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- gradschoolfail 2y agoEpicycloid -> Antikythera gearing -> planetary epicycles https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=math_etds https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl... The mathematics of the epicycloid : a historical journey with a modern perspective
- barfbagginus 2y agoSee the Wikipedia page for satisfying proofs of the Cycloid's Involute, Arc Length, Area, and Pendulum properties. The involute property has a particularly neat proof, and it gives us a neat proof of the arc length property, and a shockingly elegant construction for the pendulum motion: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycloid https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycloid The article about cardioids has a very elegant proof of coffee cup caustic reflection property: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardioid https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardioid
- ykonstant 2y agoHere is an amusing related phenomenon: if you look at dynamical system induced by multiplication by 3/2 on the binary digits of a seed and cut a fixed window, you get the following graph family: https://ykonstant1.github.io/images/trans_limit.png https://ykonstant1.github.io/images/trans_limit.png More generally, exponential maps on finite structures produce these reflection-like envelopes.
- adamddev1 2y agoIn "An Introduction to Mathematics", by A. N. Whitehead, he makes a wonderful argument for the "usefulness" of pure math. With many fascinating examples like this he describes how when people work to solve purely mathematical problems without any "real-world application," they actually end up having incredibly useful applications in real life situations down the road. But where people are limited only to seemingly useful, "practical" math problems, they don't end up making the progress that brings great practical advances in the end.
- adonovan 2y agoI just finished G. H. Hardy's celebrated "A Mathematician's Apology". He describes "useful" math such as calculus as "on the whole, rather dull", and contrasts it with the "real" math of Euler, Fermat, and Gauss, which he finds "almost wholly 'useless'"; he adds that the great achievements of applied math--relativity and quantum mechanics--are "almost as useless as number theory". He was prudent to add "at present [1940], at any rate": the phone on which I am typing wouldn't work at all without number theory, relativity, and quantum mechanics!
- jprete 2y agoI have a vague sense that mathematicians take some pride in the uselessness of their discipline, even when it's the exact opposite of useless. Maybe because the more useless the mathematics appears to be, the more it must be motivated by the pure love of the subject?
- vector_spaces 2y agoWith regard to the "pride in uselessness" thing, I caution you against generalizing here. Different people get into math for different reasons, but I would say that all the pure mathematicians I know of are motivated principally by interest in the problems they care about, and don't think too much about questions of purity. There's a nice quote from Courant in his "Introduction to Calculus & Analysis" where he warns against "smug purism", exhorting students to draw inspiration and insight from other fields because it will make them better mathematicians. I think this is the attitude that I encounter most frequently among mature, pure mathematicians. Chebyshev in particular was known not only for working on problems that had engineering applications, but for using methods and techniques from engineering to inform his approach to pure math problems. As the founder of the St. Petersburg school of mathematics, this approach had broad impacts on (later) Soviet mathematics and global mathematics as students brought up in this tradition went on to train later generations of mathematicians around the world.
- boringg 2y agoWhy is it a maths problem and not a math problem?
- innocenat 2y ago"maths" is British English for "math" in US English.
- onionisafruit 2y ago.
- lelanthran 2y ago> Why is it a maths problem and not a math problem? Because what Americans call 'math' is called 'maths' in many parts of the English-speaking world.
- gist 2y agoSimilar in US we typically say 'the University' however on HN I frequently see just 'University'. (Note I had the same thought as you but assumed (w/o a search) it was for the reason stated by your reply).
- boringg 2y agoThanks for the clarification. Maths sounds inherently terrible to me - maybe i infer US instagrammers using maths to sound hip and they don’t really use math. Glad to know its normal use in UK.