M&D - chapter 19-21 - The Calendar (personal equation)

[David Ewers]

  Thanks!

On Apr 2, 2015, at 2:35 PM Jolly good day we are having, Jerome Park wrote:

> I don't know if others are familiar with this book, so...
> 
> an excerpt here----> 
> 
> An excerpt from
> 
> A Tenth of a Second
> 
> A History
> 
> Jimena Canales
> 
> http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/093185.html
> 
> An astronomer might say “because of the personal equation,” referring to the worrisome fact that different individuals differed in their timing of star transits. Referring to two well-known astronomers, the famous historian of psychology Edwin G. Boring explained the meaning of the term: “The equation, ‘A − S = 0.202 sec.,’ means that on average [the astronomer] Argelander observed transits 0.202 sec. later than [the astronomer] Struve.” While the relative personal equation compared two observers against each other, the absolute personal equation compared one observer’s timing of an event against the time as determined by a machine. It again took the shape of an equation, where a single number was assigned to a particular person. A personal equation is rarely exactly a tenth of a second; its value tends to oscillate between one to a few tenths of a second. It is often much more than an equation, since the intriguing term is often used in various literary ways.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20150402/ad286337/attachment.html>