You answered the question "what is 3/4 of 24 gallons". That wasn't the question asked. Suppose, let's say, your wife is driving your 10mpg truck with a 24 gallon gas tank. She asks, "Can I make it to the gas station 170 miles from here? The gauge says I have 3/4 tank." Does that answer change if it's asked by a survey taker instead? Why?

That scares me. If you put mathematics in the same category as "things that don't work in practice", then science mumbo-jumbo becomes a faith religion rather than a description of reality. If you have to throw out experimental evidence to get the "right answer", there's something wrong. (It reminds me of Feynman's story of a Brazilian text book that didn't understand angular momentum.)

(Oops, sinx=x has a rational solution. I meant sin x=Ax, with A some constant I don't remember.)

I'm not surprised by people not knowing the gas tank answer. I don't know my gas tank answer. Empirically, I know at 3/4 full (indicated) I'm at about 1/2 tank, but I haven't done the measurement. My gauge is mostly logarithmic, and shows empty at 2.5 gallons remaining. My propane tank isn't much better. That's a linear height in a cylindrical, horizontal tank. There is no rational solution to convert height to volume-remaining (boiling down, as it were, to solving sin x=x).

Actually, that example doesn't work.* (You idiot! Who posted that?) This ugly work-around is more functional in bash:

* The eval is evaluated in the subshell, and my $foo$bar was set from previous experiments.

Certainly true. If you like hoop jumping, you can do it.

**ducks for cover**

The Gospel of Bart explains how JC extinguished the fires in hell. If nothing else, it's a ripping contemporary read. Here's a source (translation starts on page 179, which is in the 300s in the PDF): http://www.coptica.ch/Budge-Ap...

It's a little annoying, but for this example you can force bash shell priority with parenthesis:

I put a rough 5-gallon bucket shape into the dose calculator for 0.33% uranium ore and got 20uSv/hr at 1cm distance. Still a factor of 400 off (but not the 20,000 you got: article said 800mRem/hr contact). http://www.wise-uranium.org/rd...

What a fantastic service! I wonder if they offer a password-changing option as well?

[Angry customer]: The software I was using crashed with an assert code!
[St. Peter]: Yes, we'll have to talk to the car manufacturer about that.

Most of the software I work on can emit smoke, mangle parts, or lose data if it were to abort. There's a place for assert(), but it's not always an option.

You can't do the math until you've done the science. If you can do the math beforehand, it's engineering. (And most science also involves a lot of engineering, before you get to the unknown stuff.)

It's equally valid to say that cash has increased in value by 400% against cryptocurrency. You should buy dollars now! Disclaimer: some cryptocurrency people are saying that the current value of cash is just a bubble.

In other news, cash held fairly steady against other easily tradable commodities, with no major movement.

Cars last about 15 years. They can last 50, or 5. When you replace them depends on the economics of keeping them running. When you can't get service techs, and parts shoot up in price, you figure out how to migrate to and finance a less expensive car.

If your local police department was running a fleet of 30 year old Ford LTD Crown Vics you would rightfully question the economics. And (possibly) rightfully decide to keep them running.

Lotus Notes is nearly 30 years old, though its architecture dates to the early 70s.

My old Timex from the seventies needs to be wound every day (assuming I want to use it).