Maths problems

Do you remember those pesky “Problems” that we were given in school to apply mathematical concepts to apparently “real” problems or questions?

I remember trains leaving stations and traveling at different speeds and being asked about how long it would take for a particular train to make its journey to a certain destination. There were infuriating questions about filling baths and men digging holes.

My brain never ever “got” these problems in a way that provided any sort of correct mathematical answer. My brain liked to problem solve by thinking outside the box and coming up with answers that were not relevant to maths.

So if trains were proving maddening in terms of time and distance then my answer would have been “take the bus instead”. Likewise problems filling a bath – take a shower and as for men digging holes – well use a digger.

This photo shows a chap outside my house on Monday perhaps solving a maths problem but with my answer staring him in the face!

We have had fibre optic cable installed underground and hole digging has been a big part of that operation. I watched this chap busily dig for a bit and then the digger was used to make the hole as large as they needed. I suspect caution was required around hitting other underground services which meant manual labour was the best way to carefully check what lay beneath.

Oh and while I failed the solving of maths “Problems” my rather creative and lateral thinking brain has held me in good stead to solve many, many a real problem.

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Hieroglyphics at home

Yesterday I heard strange beeping noises, followed closely by the sound of a spray can. Now normally my neighbourhood is pretty quiet at 9.30am on a Friday and we are fortunate that spray cans are not widely used for graffiti purposes.

However hieroglyphic graffiti had appeared on the grass, the footpath and the road. There was an official looking chap wielding the spray can and sporting high viz safety gear (I’m not sure why he needed a hard hat because the only thing that could fall on him was the sky!).

Being a “concerned citizen” and having had problems with people digging up the ground and disrupting our water supply in the past because of its unlikely location, I headed out to quiz this chap.

It seems that we are to have fibre optic cables laid outside our property as part of the nationwide high speed fibre optic initiative and he was there with his special gizmo to establish the whereabouts of the underground electricity cables. When the gizmo located its target it would emit beeping noises and the chap would mark out his findings.

So here are the patterns near my house. I wonder if there will be more such hieroglyphics added soon as other gizmos search out and locate sewage pipes, waste water, water supply, telephone, gas and long redundant cable television connections. There is lot going on underground here and adding yet another cable sounds pretty tricky.