Friday 26 November 2010

Its all in the name

This evening I had just settled down for a coffee and a quick chat with 30% before we thought about getting dinner. I had barely started when the phone rang. It was a local Farmer who had Village Idiot in her sitting room - poor woman.

She had just had a steer killed and butchered and VI reminder her that I was likely to be in the market for a few cuts, hence the call. I nipped up the road and returned a while later. The haul included a sirloin and a fillet joint that I sliced in to steaks and three massive rump steaks that I sub-divided before placing in the freezer. Her beef is absolutely superb. It is local, grass fed and she hangs the fore and hind quarters for different lengths of time to ensure that the beef is as tender as possible. Apparently the rear end of this one had been suspended for the best part of 4 weeks. It looked superb. The meat was dark and well marbled with a good jacket of fat to ensure succulence.

Well done to VI for thinking of us.

Now ..... the name .... I have recently encountered an American colleague who has been christened with a forename that is identical to his surname. I kid you not, this individual carries the moniker Davis L Davis. I have obviously anonymised this chap but I am sure you get the idea.

Now I have had to introduce Davis to a few colleagues and one wag referred to him as Davis2 in an e-mail.  Now this tickled me and I smiled - its not been a funny week.... and that should have been it. A one liner in an email that made me grin and its all over .....

..... but no. As I wandered round the three miler at lunchtime I pondered this joke and realised that whilst it may be algebraically correct it is not all the way there. Pay attention and I will explain.

The chap's name is Davis L Davis. I personally feel that this is most accurately expressed algebraically as 2(Davis) + L.

It is possible that 2(Davis) = Davis2  but only if Davis = the square root of 2. For all other values of Davis, which is an unknown, only 2(Davis) expresses it accurately if one is tasked with simplifying Mr D L Davis' name.

For example, if Davis = 2 then Davis2 = Davis + Davis + Davis + Davis or, if simplified, 4(Davis).  We already know that Davis L Davis is the chap's name and we only have 2 instances of Davis in the expression. All we then need to do is take care of the L and we have simplified the name as an algebraic expression as far as is possible. 

so 2(Davis) + L it is

I know that people will say that I should get out more but on this occasion that was the problem.
Scrawled by

2 comments:

  1. Unknown27 November 2010 at 00:28

    Very close but .... As the L is his middle initial I think you should be looking at: 2(Davis) / L. because the L divides the two Davis'. Hope that helps.

    I too have been out far to much as my recent holiday picture posts will attest. ;-)

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  2. scobi27 November 2010 at 07:25

    Hi Bad Man, I think you need to review your getting out to caffeine ratio!

    But to add to this fascinating discussion, I would have to comment that I follow your logic, but it does make one mistake, in my eyes at least. You are making assumptions as to what operator is signified by a space. The normal convention is that "nothing" means multiplier. When I were a lad, to avoid ambiguity, you would use a full stop to signify multiplication. So while 2x was oft written, I would prefer 2.x to be precise.
    So, if a space is a multiply sign, Davis L Davis would be Davis.L.Davis, and this is Davis times L times Davis, or 2DavisL to short-hand it.
    Waddya say?

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