The Universe of Discourse

Google query roundup
My blog continues to attract interesting Google queries. I had fun looking over the queries and writing about them last month, so I thought I'd try it again.

Sometimes the queries are for very specific information that I can't provide:

	   1  the four type of flowers by aristotle
	   1 c-source code for earth revolving sun
	   1 colleges christian goldbach went to 
	   1 moon sky rhode island position feb 01-feb 14
	   1 what is robert hooke' s middle name?
	   1 scientific definition on why fingers get pruney
	   1 source code of unrestricted simplex protocol in c

Buy An Essay Towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language from Bookshop.org (with kickback) (without kickback)

In the "you're asking the wrong question, so all you'll get is the wrong answer" department:

	   1 books typical copies sold

	   1 "typical royalties" 
	   1 total o'reilly books sold
	   1 typical royalties

In the "damn, I wish I had the foggiest idea" department:

	   1 what happens inside the chrysalis

Sometimes, the page to which the user is referred is just perfect for their query:

	   1 every natural number is either a fibonacci number or it
  	     can be written as a sum of nonconsecutive fibonacci numbers 

	   6 how many people can use an armonica properly

Contrary to this, however, is this recurring query:

	   1 linear math system eliminate debt

Some of the queries are even more depressing. For example:

	   1 which expression represents the number 96 written as a
             product of primes? 

Here's another one like that:

	   1 greatest common factor of 36 and 63

But sometimes searching for the exact question you want answered does work:

 	   1 a rope lying over the top of a fence is the same length
  	     on each side.  it weighs one third of a pound per foot.
  	     on one end hangs a monkey holding a banana, and on the
  	     other end a weight equal to the weight of the monkey. the
  	     banana weighs two ounces per inch.  the rope is as long
  	     (in feet) as the age of the monkey (in years), and the
  	     weight of the monkey (in ounces) is the same as the age
  	     of the monkey's mother.  the combined age of the monkey
  	     and its mother is thirty years.  one half of the weight
  	     of the monkey, plus the weight of the banana, is one
  	     forth as much as the weight of the weight and the weight
  	     of the rope.  the monkey's mother is half as old as the
  	     monkey will be when it is three times as old as its
  	     mother was when she she was half as old as the monkey
  	     will be when when it is as old as its mother will be when
  	     she is four times as old as the monkey was when it was
  	     twice as its mother was when she was one third as old as
  	     the monkey was when it was old as is mother was when she
  	     was three times as old as the monkey was when it was one
  	     fourth as old as it is now.  how long is the banana?

Speaking of problems that are simpler than they first appear, Jeff Abrahamson told me a good one a few months ago: One-tenth of a sphere is painted red, the rest blue. Show that there must exist eight blue points that lie at the vertices of a cube.

	   1 how did they invent the chinese symbols

Buy Writing Systems from Bookshop.org (with kickback) (without kickback)

Others are phonetically motivated. For example, the word for "ridgepole" is a compound of "wood" and "east" . The tree makes sense, because ridgepoles are made of wood, but why "east"? It's because the word for "ridgepole" is pronounced dòng, exactly the same as the word for "east". Lots of words are dòng, but this is the wooden dòng. The "east" component tells you how to pronounce it, and the "wood" component hints at the meaning.

Writing Systems, by Geoffrey Sampson, has a chapter about this; I recommend both the chapter and the rest of the book.

	   1 fundamental theorem of phyllotaxis 

Other fundamental theorems include: the fundamental theorem of arithmetic, which says that every positive integer has a unique factorization into primes; the fundamental theorem of algebra, which says that every nth degree polynomial has n roots over the complex numbers; and the fundamental theorem of calculus, which relates the integral and differential calculus by saying that if f' is the derivative function of f, then:

	   1 doctor dolittle racism
	   1 dr dolittle prince bumpo racism
	   1 dr doolittle racism

I think a lot could be said about the presence or absence of racism in the Dolittle books, although I wouldn't expect much agreement on such a hot-button topic. But I imagine there would be more agreement that the changes that were made to the book in the name of greater racial sensitivity are rather weird.

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