Photography by Santarosa, Justin Wong and Brian. Edited by Brian
(This was meant to be posted on Monday. Sorry about the lateness).
Many of us who struggle to learn math (yes, I am one of them) suffer from assorted challenges, like ADD, procrastination, lack of focus, depression, and other things that are or aren’t nameable.
That’s no big, deal, unless we chose to make it one. Every challenge is just that, a call to step up and beat it. So we constantly seek methods, systems and other tools to help us. That’s partly what makes a challenge fun – finding new, cool things that other people never think about.
Recently I was speaking with a friend of mine. He seems to get a lot done, and I always admired that about him. I mentioned that to him, and he seems to think that he doesn’t really. At least not naturally, anyway.
“But guys like you always seem to be on top of things, not terribly overwhelmed with all the things you want to do. You at least get your work done. Maybe there are a lot of hobbies and other interests you don’t get to, but you really get your job done.” I said. “It seems like one thing about the military is that makes sure you get your work accomplished.” (My friend is an officer in the Navy.)
He explained that that is pretty true. He said it had a lot to do with engineering controls vs. administrative controls. I asked him what he meant.
He explained that in his job, certain things must get done. They can mean the difference between life-and-death. Here’s and example from navigation history:
On sailing ships, you needed to know the time to navigate in open waters accurately. The administrative control would be to have orders to wind and maintain the clock to keep it accurate. But you could forget to wind it, it could break, or something else could happen to it.
The engineering control would be to have three clocks. As soon as one was off, you could check it against the other two. (The likelihood that two clocks would go wrong, and display the same time is infinitesimal.)
Note: The politician’s control would have to been to have two clocks. Then he could say he was doing something to check the clock’s accuracy, and save money at the same time, by not having to buy a third clock. In reality, he would have accomplished nothing, (you couldn’t tell which or the two clocks was wrong) and spent twice as much money as having one clock. But he would have done just enough for him to get credit for having an “action plan” and have the general population of dunces accept it.
Engineering controls vs. administrative controls have a lot to do with the difference between doing something, and saying you are doing something.
As you may have noticed, a recurring theme in Math Mojo is that there is no positive value in saying you are going to do something. Today is a great day to notice that if you are a New Yorker. Today is the day that we get a new governor, because Elliot Spitzer had to step down. He was the crusader who was going to bring a higher standard Albany. He had all the makings of a guy who’d keep his promise. He had been a go-getter State Attorney General. He cleaned up a lot in that position.
But his promises of “cleaning house” as governor fell to pieces in the wake of his lack of judgement and self-control. I won’t go into details, as they are not important here, and I am neither a moralist nor a gossip (they are the same thing). The important point, is that it doesn’t matter if you are a nincompoop who’s failing 7th-grade math for the second time, or you’re the super-competent Governor of an enlightened state – saying your going to do is nothing compared to making sure you do it.
Here’s another timely example – Today is St. Patrick’s Day. There are going to be a lot of Americans who are going to do some competitive drinking tonight. An administrative control would be to say, “I’m not going to drive if I drink to much.” Of course we know how good our judgement is to make a decision like that after we’ve had to much right? Um, I don’t think so.
An engineering control would be to let a designated driver, who is not a drinker, drive, if you intend to drink at all.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
