Transcript Numbers Matter

Numbers carry
meaning . . .
emotion . . .
character . . .
soul . . .
According to a press release from
August 11, 2009, the new
Chevrolet Volt gets 230 miles per
gallon of gasoline.
What could this possibly mean? The
Volt can be driven for about 40 miles
on nothing but electric charge!
The whole miles-per-gallon concept
had to be redefined just to produce this
230 mpg value.
And . . . why has all the publicity buzz
about the Volt said absolutely nothing
about the money and environmental costs
to produce the electricity that runs it?
Consider this radio ad for Cardiostat.
“Today your heart will pump blood
12,000 miles. That’s a trip from L.A. to
Moscow and back.”
Charles Osgood reads this ad copy.
12, 000 miles
Let’s see about that. The figure
day
converts to
12, 000 miles
24 hours 60 minutes 60 seconds
day 


day
hour
minute
That’s about 733 feet per second.
So what exactly is this all about? Even in
a high-power fire hose, water cannot be
propelled at 733 feet per second.
Can this claim be using the fact that the blood vessels in
the human body add up to a lot of linear distance?
That seems illogical, and these hose diagrams show why.
The hose in the first picture was split to make the hose in
the second picture. The total cross-section has not been
changed.
If the in-flow in the two pictures is the same, we’d have to
say that they move the same amount of liquid per second.
A bit of searching will enable us to discover that blood
moves through major vessels at about 15 cm/second.
If this is the speed of movement, then there must be some
unit of blood B such that the total accounts for 733 miles.
That is,
 number of units of 

  15 cm  733 miles
 B in blood system 
 number of units of 
This solves as 
 ≈ 7,900,000.
 B in blood system 
The human body has about five liters of blood. If we
divide five liters into 7.9 million parts, the part size is
about 0.63 cubic millimeter.
This volume could plausibly be described as a “drop.”
Thus, if you think of your body has having 7.9 million
drops of blood, and if these drops move, on average,
about 15 cm per second, then indeed there will be 733
drop-feet per second.
Does this make you want to buy CardioStat?
CardioStat is a formulation of omega-3 fish oil.
Here is another source of fish oil:
Here are some numbers that might cause you to think . . .
Year
Derivatives traded OTC,
as % of world GDP
Derivatives traded in organized
markets,
as % of world GDP
1990
16%
10%
1995
61%
32%
2000
196%
42%
2005
460%
113%
Source: Finance: Servant or Deceiver, Paul Dembinski, Figure 2.5, page 96.
There is some looseness in terms of
defining derivatives, but for sure the
numbers have exploded.
The right column (organized markets) has
grown by a factor of 11.
The left column (over-the-counter markets)
has grown by a factor of 29.
Those who created and traded those
derivatives certainly made plenty of money
with them.
But . . . what were the products and
infrastructure that they left behind for the
rest of us?
There will be painful decisions for all of us
regarding these issues. . .