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I haven't read the article. What I've been repeatedly pointing out is that Einstein was appallingly poor at arithmetic. I am also repeatedly pointing out that

I haven't read the article. What I've been repeatedly pointing out is that Einstein was appallingly poor at arithmetic. I am also repeatedly pointing out that his theories are flawless, as far as we can tell through experiment. When Einstein attempted to predict the experimental results of his theory, while the theory was correct, his predictions were wildly inaccurate, because he was really, really bad at arithmetic. I'm not just making this up - I learned it in physics class at Caltech, from the president of the Institute. Caltech is in pasadena, Mt. Wilson overlooks pasadena, the Mt. Wilson Observatory office is in pasadena. Mt. Wilson and Caltech are different organizations but work very closely together.

dalke 11y ago
Grr! Then at least start your first comment with "I haven't read the article, but based on keyword matching in the title I want to say .." or something like that. There's no reason to repeatedly point out that Einstein's theories are flawless. The article specifically says "To most physicists, such discussions are largely irrelevant, as these classic experiments were only the first ones in a long series of tests that showed the complete agreement between observations and predictions from special relativity." See also http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1632 http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1632 .
GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
Have you considered the possibility that your instructor is not infallible and may have been in error.
- MichaelCrawford 11y ago
  He was the president of the institute, and a tenured physics professor.
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
    Yeah but he's not the pope.
    - dalke 11y ago
      I think you have the same confusion I did. MichaelCrawford appears to be showing off via name dropping, rather than providing useful information, which is what I expected. There is a common misperception that Einstein was lousy at math. Some sources say it's because the Swiss and German systems both use a numerical scale, but in opposite directions, so what looks like an excellent grade in one is lousy in the others. Others conjecture that it was because he didn't originally think that high mathematics was important for physics, so was considered a lazy student. (See http://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-Albert-Einstein-failed-in-mathematics-many-times-during-his-school-days http://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-Albert-Einstein-failed-... for various comments.) It seems that MichaelCrawford is unaware of this misperception, as the claim that Einstein was "appallingly poor at arithmetic" is attributed only be reputation of the speaker of said claim. While that may be a good first step, anyone who was aware of the misperception would know it is necessary to have stronger evidence to remove doubt. Such evidence does not exist. Instead, we see that MichaelCrawford doubles down by appealing again to authority, instead of doing a search for "Einstein bad at arithmeic". All 10 of the first hits from Google describe how Einstein was not bad at algebra and how such a belief - even when expressed by a tenured CalTech professor - is simply wrong. In http://io9.com/the-math-problem-that-had-einstein-asking-for-help-from-1443667839 http://io9.com/the-math-problem-that-had-einstein-asking-for... we even see a case where Einstein did get the math wrong - he had miscalculated coefficient of friction. Had he been "appallingly poor at arithmetic" there would be many more, and much more clear, examples of arithmetic errors.

dalke 11y ago

Grr! Then at least start your first comment with "I haven't read the article, but based on keyword matching in the title I want to say .." or something like that. There's no reason to repeatedly point out that Einstein's theories are flawless. The article specifically says "To most physicists, such discussions are largely irrelevant, as these classic experiments were only the first ones in a long series of tests that showed the complete agreement between observations and predictions from special relativity." See also http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1632 http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1632 .

GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago

Have you considered the possibility that your instructor is not infallible and may have been in error.

MichaelCrawford 11y ago
He was the president of the institute, and a tenured physics professor.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  Yeah but he's not the pope.
  - dalke 11y ago
    I think you have the same confusion I did. MichaelCrawford appears to be showing off via name dropping, rather than providing useful information, which is what I expected. There is a common misperception that Einstein was lousy at math. Some sources say it's because the Swiss and German systems both use a numerical scale, but in opposite directions, so what looks like an excellent grade in one is lousy in the others. Others conjecture that it was because he didn't originally think that high mathematics was important for physics, so was considered a lazy student. (See http://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-Albert-Einstein-failed-in-mathematics-many-times-during-his-school-days http://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-Albert-Einstein-failed-... for various comments.) It seems that MichaelCrawford is unaware of this misperception, as the claim that Einstein was "appallingly poor at arithmetic" is attributed only be reputation of the speaker of said claim. While that may be a good first step, anyone who was aware of the misperception would know it is necessary to have stronger evidence to remove doubt. Such evidence does not exist. Instead, we see that MichaelCrawford doubles down by appealing again to authority, instead of doing a search for "Einstein bad at arithmeic". All 10 of the first hits from Google describe how Einstein was not bad at algebra and how such a belief - even when expressed by a tenured CalTech professor - is simply wrong. In http://io9.com/the-math-problem-that-had-einstein-asking-for-help-from-1443667839 http://io9.com/the-math-problem-that-had-einstein-asking-for... we even see a case where Einstein did get the math wrong - he had miscalculated coefficient of friction. Had he been "appallingly poor at arithmetic" there would be many more, and much more clear, examples of arithmetic errors.