General Questions Thread

[TinyRedLeaf]

You know, now that I've brought it up, how would you illustrate the division by fractions to a 10-year-old?

I just realised that, even today, I can't think of an easy way to show what's going on behind the arithmetic.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

You know, now that I've brought it up, how would you illustrate the division by fractions to a 10-year-old?

I just realised that, even today, I can't think of an easy way to show what's going on behind the arithmetic.

Start with small fraction, like :

Show him what happens when 1/4 is divided by 1/2. The general arithmetic formula is

[1/4] / [1/2] = [1/4] x [2/1] = 2/4 = 1/2

Use the analogy of 2 similar pies being cut into 4 parts and 2 parts respectively, and how many half-sized parts, can fit into a quarter sized pie?

Answer : A half-size of the half size.

Always keep in mind that the concept behind division is :

X divided by Y = How many parts of of Y can fit into X?

I remember being the one explaining it to my Primary school teacher and had my parents being called up for disrupting the class. Well, I read it from a book about shortcuts to complex arithmetic, with tricks like how to multiply 3 digit numbers by 3 digit numbers, back when I was very young, about 5 or 6.

The books that you read when you in your toddler years tend to stick in your memory for a bloody long time, because it is at the very bottom of your memory bank. It is pretty amazing that after 16 years, I still can remember the technique for multiplying 3 digit numbers by 3 digit numbers, and the first 41 digits of pi, but I can't remember how to do college-maths level trigonometry.

[Vexx]

There USED to be a club in most schools in the US called "Number Sense" where they ran teams to compete against other schools. They'd learn a slew of math tricks to rapidly solve equations and engage in contests. My wife was a member when we were in high school.

That was before the Great Dumbing Down of Society though.....

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by Vexx

There USED to be a club in most schools in the US called "Number Sense" where they ran teams to compete against other schools. They'd learn a slew of math tricks to rapidly solve equations and engage in contests. My wife was a member when we were in high school.

That was before the Great Dumbing Down of Society though.....

Over here it is : "It doesn't matter how it works. It is the correct method we are teaching you know, so just learn and don't ask any questions. You have to finish the syllabus by then end of this semester before the exams."

We'd be drilled in the same old question types over and over again until it becomes automatic response. But most of us still don't understand how the underlying concepts actually worked, other than the kids who played around with the equations at home during their free time.

[Vinak]

I don't really want to start a new thread in the tech support section of the website with my question. So I am asking here. If nobody knows the answer than it's no big deal.

What is the best method or settings to compress files using 7z or winrar?


I am compressing and backing up files for a reformat I will be doing later today or tomorrow to replace my windows 7 RC1 operating system with a retail version of windows 7.

it's about 200gb worth of material. pictures, video, music, games etc.

i am only seeing a 95% compression ratio at the moment and I am hoping to get that a little lower.

[Kyuusai]

Originally Posted by Vinak

I don't really want to start a new thread in the tech support section of the website with my question. So I am asking here. If nobody knows the answer than it's no big deal.

What is the best method or settings to compress files using 7z or winrar?


I am compressing and backing up files for a reformat I will be doing later today or tomorrow to replace my windows 7 RC1 operating system with a retail version of windows 7.

it's about 200gb worth of material. pictures, video, music, games etc.

i am only seeing a 95% compression ratio at the moment and I am hoping to get that a little lower.

The 7z and RAR compression schemes are pretty effective, actually.

The issue here is that all your pictures, video, music, and games are, for the most part, already highly compressed. Much of the storage savings you get at that point is simply data contained in fewer total files and therefore potentially a few bytes are saved per file due to filesystem inefficiency.

So, the short answer is that, unfortunately, you aren't really going to get it appreciably smaller than you have now. And it's going to take a loooong time to squeeze any significant savings out. In the time you'd wait on compressing/decompressing the data, you could have earned enough working a part-time job to buy a spare hard drive.

[felix]

Originally Posted by Vinak

it's about 200gb worth of material. pictures, video, music, games etc.

Do not compress stuff that's already compressed. Videos in particular, images (jpegs etc), music (flac, mp3 etc) -- not worth it. Things like PDF you save a little bit here and there but pretty much not so cool either. What's worth compressing: text and anything to do with text will give you incredible savings, game files sometimes (it depends but its usually worth a try). If you have things like .ISOs etc I suggest you make sure the image is not tacking up more space then its actually storing (or using a alternative format otherwise).

The archiving feature I use the most is store, just because archives are so much easier to move around then having 2³² files copied (eww!).

[Frailty]

why is Rob Schneider always there in all of Adam Sandler's movies? and vise versa
why is Adam Sandler always there in all of Rob Schneider's movies?

[-KarumA-]

Originally Posted by Frailty

why is Rob Schneider always there in all of Adam Sandler's movies? and vise versa
why is Adam Sandler always there in all of Rob Schneider's movies?

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_is_rob...dler%27s_films

[Vinak]

thanks for the help concerning compression. It makes sense now. i knew pictures and videos were already compressed but it never occurred to me while trying to back up my files.

I ultimately decided to delete all but roughly 40 gigs of my data and stick it onto my Ipod...only thing i got that i can use as an external hard drive lol.

it would have taken me 9-12 hours to finish the compression of 200gigs of data. then probably a few days to place all the data onto...50 dvds... It took an hour just to transfer 40 gigs of information from my hard drives to my Ipod.

[monster]

What happened to the option of finding threads started by a member when clicking on the name?

[-KarumA-]

Originally Posted by monstert

What happened to the option of finding threads started by a member when clicking on the name?

Don't know but you can still see it when you check their profile >> statistics

[monster]

Ah, thank you very much

[xris]

Originally Posted by monstert

What happened to the option of finding threads started by a member when clicking on the name?

This was never a option in the drop down menu.

Are you sure you are not mixing up the following two options?

Find all posts by ...
Find all threads started by ...

Those two are available from the user's profile.

The option "Find More Posts by ..." is the one available in the drop-down menu (when you click on the poster's user name within a post).

Or are you saying that you no longer can see this option in the drop-down menu?

[john_kun]

Originally Posted by Kyuusai

The 7z and RAR compression schemes are pretty effective, actually.

The issue here is that all your pictures, video, music, and games are, for the most part, already highly compressed. Much of the storage savings you get at that point is simply data contained in fewer total files and therefore potentially a few bytes are saved per file due to filesystem inefficiency.

So, the short answer is that, unfortunately, you aren't really going to get it appreciably smaller than you have now. And it's going to take a loooong time to squeeze any significant savings out. In the time you'd wait on compressing/decompressing the data, you could have earned enough working a part-time job to buy a spare hard drive.

I think it should be all about being rich, famous and simply buying yourself enough hard drive space and not to worry about those things. But who knows I am not that damn good to know the difference

[monster]

Originally Posted by xris

This was never a option in the drop down menu.

Are you sure you are not mixing up the following two options?

Find all posts by ...
Find all threads started by ...

Those two are available from the user's profile.

The option "Find More Posts by ..." is the one available in the drop-down menu (when you click on the poster's user name within a post).

Or are you saying that you no longer can see this option in the drop-down menu?

Well, I guess my memory is not as good as it used to be. At any case, yeah, I was just looking for the Find all threads started by ... option.

[Woopzilla]

What is (if there is one) the term for when people accidentally swap words around in a sentence? Or when they swap the starting letters of a word?

Eg. "I fan pretty rast." (I ran pretty fast.)

or

"One drop of world could cover the water." (Awesome quote from non other than Kent Hovind, who wanted to say the still horribly wrong "One drop of water could cover the world... if you spread it real thin.")

I was just wondering since I was reading about Lord Rugdumph (an Orc who uses malapropisms in Oblivion) on the uesp wiki site.

[Kyuusai]

Originally Posted by Woopzilla

What is (if there is one) the term for when people accidentally swap words around in a sentence? Or when they swap the starting letters of a word?

Eg. "I fan pretty rast." (I ran pretty fast.)

or

"One drop of world could cover the water." (Awesome quote from non other than Kent Hovind, who wanted to say the still horribly wrong "One drop of water could cover the world... if you spread it real thin.")

I was just wondering since I was reading about Lord Rugdumph (an Orc who uses malpopisms in Oblivion) on the uesp wiki site.

If you're referring to how people perceive words/letters, this is a manifestation of dyslexia.

I'm not unfamiliar with the phenomenon. I tend to get a little lysdexic when I'm tired.

[Woopzilla]

I was thinking more of a 'slip of tongue' kind of thing... not really a condition or anything. But I guess it does happen more often when you're tired. :P

[LynnieS]

Originally Posted by Woopzilla

I was thinking more of a 'slip of tongue' kind of thing... not really a condition or anything. But I guess it does happen more often when you're tired. :P

Do you mean spoonerisms?