Eh. Mild Rant About "Fuzzy Math."

The BBQ Pit
1

This may very well be my first OP in The Pit. I really don’t know and cannot remember. I gathered together all of the SDMB Token Credits that I have been saving up, took them to the cashier’s counter, and sitting right next to the basket of plastic octopuses on the shelf, was this mild rant.

Now, the phrase “Fuzzy Math” was used extensively by both candidates last election cycle. I cannot remember who started it. I believe is was President Bush. But that doesn’t matter. Today, during John Kerry’s acceptance speech of the endorsement of the AFL-CIO, he used the term “Fuzzy Math.”

UGH! Where the hell did you come back from?! I thought we killed you!

So, here we go again, tossing the “Fuzzy Math” all around, like so many…uh…uhm…bananas?

I thought I had escaped that phrase after the last election. I knew not one person who, by the time the election was over, still thought that that phrase was poignant, or cute, or witty, or even comical anymore. Everyone just wanted it to go away.

Well, it’s back.

So, right here, on the SDMB, I am starting the Official SDMB We Will Gouge Our Eyes Out With Blunt Spoons If We Hear That Phrase One More Time (OSDMBWWGOEOWBSIWHTPOMT) ™ petition. Please sign at the bottom. Maybe if we get enough people to sign, They will stop the torture. The last thing that I want is half of the population walking around with eye patches, especially since the Eye Patch Industry is in John Kerry’s back pocket with unsolicited donations.

Please, think of the children.

Oh, and one last side note. Please, Liberals, reread your posts at least once before you hit the “Submit” button in Great Debates. Here are a couple Rules of Thumb: *

  1. If you honestly would not dictate your post out loud to your best friend’s mother, then maybe it doesn’t belong in Great Debates either.

  2. Try to stay focused on the subject matter at hand. Anymore, a thread will go a maximum of three posts before it veers way off course.

  3. And, sarcasm is not wit.

  4. Nor is it proper debate form.

  5. Nor is “GeeDubya,” or, “Shrub.”

  • Not all Liberals are guilty of these tendencies. But you know who you are.

Please, think of the children.

2

See, Chicago, the point of Kerry using the phrase was precisely to recall Bush’s use of the phrase. It was in the context of highlighting Bush’s backpedalling from his claims regarding 2.6 million jobs his economy will create over the next year, and an apparent explanation that he is not in charge of numbers. He was tying Bush in with his own phrase in saying that it doesn’t take fuzzy math to count to 0. I thought it was a good quip. Kind of like how he turned “bring it on” around on him the other day.

But, you probably really realized that he was intentionally referencing Bush by using the phrase again.

Thanks, by the way, for your helpful tips. I thought #2 was really ironic, given the topic of this thread.

3

Oh, I just hate the phrase, no matter who says it. It’s just plain stooopid.

4

I agree with you on Shrub, but I thought GeeDubya was considered an acceptable, non-insulting nickname. What’s the consensus here? I just call him Bush, or Bush43 when it’s necessary to differentiate between him and Dad.

5

Someone tell me who used “fuzzy math” how? I googled the term, and every hit seemed to be about a different meaning:

  1. Fuzzy logic (This one’s actually really a branch of maths! Honest.)
  2. Using misleading and incorrect statistics in a political speech.
  3. New maths - some sort of ill-conceived fad in teaching trying to get kids to get a feel for maths, but failing to teach them anything.

I wonder if the meaning’ll start to repeat… :slight_smile:

6

Bush used it about 47 times in one debate against Gore, as per your definitions 1 and 2. I thought it was rather funny to accuse Gore, of all people, of being imprecise. I also thought it was rather funny in light of the election results.

Of course, I’m not laughing now.

7

:slight_smile:

But, did he really use fuzzy logic? I wasn’t joking when I said it was an actual type of maths (concerning using truth values other than true-false, used to consider real world type statements, iirc.)…

8

…Or have I been whooshed?

9

Shade,

I don’t think that you have been whooshed. Definition 2: misleading or incorrect statistics, was being thrown all over the place in the 2000 election. I distinctly remember it happening from both sides, although the exact contexts escapes me now. It was probably lowering taxes versus universal health care.

10

Your memory is wrong, Faucet. Gore did not say it at all. Bush accused Gore of it in the 10/3/00 debate:Partial transcript

That came after Bush several times accused Gore of using “phony numbers” (a comment worthy of a Pit thread all by itself today). We know who turned out right about Medicare costs, don’t we? It’s understandable that you’d prefer to dismiss Bush’s failure to even attempt to make budget numbers add up, but don’t try to claim it’s because you’re *bored * with hearing a term he used to defend his own laziness.

11

Spoz will be happy to hear that one… or maybe just mock-disappointed. Fuzzy LKogic is also a song title of his… maybe that’s where he got the inspiration from? Must ask… :smiley:

12

Hell, I meant Fuzzy Logic. Damn cold room and cold fingers…

13

Chicago Faucet,

I think the second half of your post is more important than the first. Why can’t certain liberals grasp that " Why are republicans/conservatives evil/hate poor people/sacrifice babies to Greenspan? " isn’t a topic for debate? It’s a rant. They belong here like the " liberals wouldn’t know reality if it bit them in the ass" threads.

14

Or maybe the other way round - mathematicians and computer scientists love a whimsical as well as meaningful name :smiley:

15

ElvisL1ves, the only thing that I’m bored with is you.

16

So what’s the story here, tap boy? Your “Don’t criticize Bush” OP not quite workin’ out for ya? Bored with it now?

Oops, sarcasm. I guess you win.

17

Not working out? I don’t follow you. My rant was not at all along the lines of, “Don’t criticize President Bush.” My rant was along the lines of “‘Fuzzy Math’ is a stupid phrase, and it annoys me.”

I don’t see why you read this thread and immediately assumed that I was a President Bush supporter. Apparently, the venom from the Liberals is pretty free-flowing anymore.

18

No, your rant was about that and it was a rant against “Liberals.”

By this, i assume you could mean one of more of the following:

a) members of the Australian Liberal Party (which, paradoxically enough, is Australia’s conservative party)

b) the Canadian Liberals, who currently dominate national politics in that country

c) one of a number of other Liberal parties worldwide

or, most likely, you meant:

d) “liberals,” taken to mean that broad and amorphous group that tends to vote for the Democratic candidate in US elections.

Well, when you combine a rant about presidential election tactics with a rant against liberals, you perhaps should not be too surprised if people start mistaking you for a Republican. Perhaps, in future, if you don’t want to be pigeonholed so quickly, you might think about keeping your anti-liberal rants separate from your rants about campaign rhetoric.

Finally, if you don’t understand the reason that John Kerry is bringing up the term “fuzzy math” right now, as pointed out by Hentor the Barbarian and ElvisL1ves, perhaps you haven’t quite attained the level of sophistication required to analyze presidential campaigns.

But hope is at hand. If the faucet stays on long enough, i’m sure it will eventually run hot.

19

The term “fuzzy math” also pops up in Crimson Skies, an X-box game set in an alternate-history 1920s USA. The main character uses it in a taunt after shooting down another pilot. I am not making this up.

20

This isn’t the only time you’ve ever posted, ya know. We knew that detail about you already.

So, learning facts bores you, huh? Then what the hell are you doing on this board?