Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2012 April 4

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April 4

graicunas formula

moved here from Talk:Graicunas formula, as it appears to be very poorly watched.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:07, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Is there not any limitations of graicunas formula? like human nature and his ability to handle subordinates?if we take this in consideration then it could violate the given concept...chitra pokharia...

I've commented on similar factors under Diseconomy_of_Scale#Communication_costs and Diseconomies_of_scale#Top-heavy_companies. Note that I don't make any distinction between the need for a boss to communicate with subordinates and for the subordinates to communicate with each other. The Span of control article also discusses this. StuRat (talk) 04:16, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

What the Frankfurters, French fries, and flying Frisbees is that doing on Wikipedia in the first place? Entirely unsourced, written in something that appears to be almost (but not quite) English, and ending in the conclusion that "When the x principle enunciated by Graicunas is valid or not, whether the formulae has empirical validity or not, the problem that any increase in the number of subordinates would lead to complexity in the relationships between the individual and groups has aptly been brought out by Graicunas. It is this factor that needs to be carefully considered in any discussion on how many subordinates an executive can effectively control". I'd submit this to AfD if I thought it was an article... AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:29, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

I suspect uncorrected OCR. —Tamfang (talk) 01:21, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

It sounds like a jumbled attempt at solving the handshake problem - i.e. counting the number of relationships between a set number of people. We already know the answer to that is described by triangular numbers - if n is the number of subordinates, the number of relationships is ${\frac {n(n+1)}{2}}$. The one difference, according to this paper by a consulting firm, is that Graicunas also counts the number of possible groupings (i.e. combinations) of subordinates. Again, the mathematics of combinations (known as combinatorics) tells us the answer to this is simply $2^{n}-1$. This isn't so much a formula as a collection of equations, it's meant as an illustration rather than a cold hard calculation of management complexity, and none of this was originally Graicunas's, he just seems to have been the first to apply this to management consultancy. Smurrayinchester 12:18, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

You might want to link the various occurrences of Graicunas to Vytautas Andrius Graičiūnas (different spelling, found only after an extended search). --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 12:55, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Wearing gloves when meeting Pres Nixon

Any reason why the children in this photo are all wearing gloves? The picture is of President Nixon arriving at the Cape for the launch of Apollo 12 on 14 November 1969. A few in the front of the throng also appear to be wearing brown caps with a high peak on the top of the cap. Are they girl scouts? (The children do all look to be girls). Thanks guys. 121.44.43.67 (talk) 05:45, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

The green (and also brown) caps say Girl Scouts and Brownies to me. I'm not sure what's up with the gloves though. They aren't formal gloves (so they aren't on because they are meeting the President). Maybe precautions for the astronauts against infection?--Wehwalt (talk) 05:53, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

It wasn't all that long ago that a well-dressed young lady (or any age, for that matter) would wear gloves as part of her standard clobber when out in public. 1969 would be well within the latter part of the glove zone. A lot's changed with female behaviour since then. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 06:01, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

I just noticed Mrs Nixon is also wearing gloves (black leather). So when did women stop wearing gloves as a matter of course? I thought it would have been in the mid 60s? Perhaps not from looking at this pic! 121.44.43.67 (talk) 06:16, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

No, somewhat later than that. I remember my sister still wearing gloves well into the 1970s. Back then, it was also considered inappropriate for a man to travel on a plane dressed in less than a suit, or at the very least a shirt and tie. I think it all fell apart when the sexual revolution and women's liberation really started making their mark. And now we have that women's lib ultra-champion Germaine Greer picking on Julia Gillard's dress sense, when she'd never make such remarks about male politicians, so things have come full circle, but not in a good way. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 06:30, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

The fact that the kids' gloves have short wrists and appear sloppily put on leads me to believe that they are not formal gloves, which are longer in the wrist and generally smooth against the skin. These have more the look of the gloves you put on at archives.--Wehwalt (talk) 06:33, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

To me these look the same as gloves here and here.--Itinerant1 (talk) 08:03, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

The gloves appear to a part of the formal Girl Scout uniform. Here's a picture. Maybe someone involved in the Girl Scouts could confirm when the gloves stopped being worn (if, indeed, they have stopped). - Cucumber Mike (talk) 07:32, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

White gloves are either optional or mandatory, depending on the locale, during formal flag ceremonies to this day:[1] [2]--Itinerant1 (talk) 08:03, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

In 1969, women still wore gloves, although hats for men were dropping out of style (and that was not Kennedy's fault). I see at least three different styles, so these don't appear to be uniform. I poked around on the GSUSA museum site, but don't see anything on gloves. As First Lady, Pat Nixon was the Honorary President of the Girl Scouts of the USA, just as President Nixon was the Honorary President of the Boy Scouts of America. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 08:36, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Just because the gloves are not the same, or worn sloppily, doesn't mean that they are not uniform. I took my Cub Scouts to provide a guard of honour for the Queen last week, and informed everyone that they should wear full uniform, including polished black shoes. The shoes that arrived turned out to include Plimsoles, Trainers with prominent logos and a variety of other unsuitable footwear. My point being that if a child is asked to come in 'smart white gloves', there is a lot of scope for difference of style and wearing habit. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 08:47, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

People used to wear gloves a lot, a practice which faded over time (except in cold weather) - and has now reappeared as awareness of the spread of disease his increased. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:14, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

in 1969 my wife was attending a school for "young ladies" in sub-tropical Brisbane, Australia, which is very warm and humid in summer. She often speaks, as if it's one of those strongest memories from her schooldays, of being required to wear gloves as part of the school uniform whenever outside the school grounds. HiLo48 (talk) 21:57, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

It's always a good idea to wear gloves when touching a Tricky Dick. StuRat (talk) 05:20, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

NAMING OF THE WEEK DAYS

The division of days among the planets was done based on the speed of each planet as perceived from earth. Sun and Moon being the nearest and most important planets were allotted first two days and then the planet next in sequence to the original position of the planet was given the next day. The sequence based on speed is Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn.

So after Sunday and Monday, the next to Sun was Mars hence the day was 'Mangalwar', next to moon was Mercury and hence 'Budhawar', next to Mars was Jupiter and hence Guruwar, next to Mercury was Venus and hence ‘Shukrawar’, next to Jupiter was Saturn and hence ‘Shaniwar’ and thus the seven names in this particular sequence.

AS PER THE ABOVE STATEMENTS,AFTER SUN AND MOON,THE SEQUENCE BASED ON THE SPEED OF THE PLANETS IS MERCURY,VENUS ,MARS, JUPITAR AND SATURN.

THEN THE ORDER SHOULD BE SUN(SUNDAY),MOON(MONDAY),MERCURY(BUDHWAR),VENUS(SHUKRAWAR),MARS(MANGALWAR), JUPITOR(GURUWAR)AND SATURN(SANIWAR). I WANTED CLARIFICATION FOR MY UNDERSTANDING. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.110.158.37 (talk) 07:00, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

I suggest you read our article on names of the days of the week. And please don't SHOUT. Thank you.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 08:14, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

A large chunk of the above is quoted from names of the days of the week. Specifically, we list a "speed sequence" of Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, etc. We then note that days were named based on speed. We then list the days (with a strongly-implied cause-and-effect statement) in the order Sun, Mars, Moon, Mercury, etc, which does not resemble the "speed sequence" that the days are supposedly derived from. So the OP is quite correct that clarification is needed, and our article does not provide it. Beyond that, though, this is well outside my field and I have no help to offer. — Lomn 19:18, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

The sequence of the days - according to the abovenamed article - is based on the speed of the planets, but not in a straightforward way as is explained there in the History section. Take the given sequence of planet speeds Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn (and imagine the seven names to form a ring). Then start with Sun or wherever you like as the first day. Then count three planets to the left and get Moon for the second day, once again three planets to the left (in the ring) you get Mars for the third day. Repeat this seven times and you get all days of the week circle. This is the "Western" explanation. The "Indian" explanation is a bit strange. --91.50.50.195 (talk) 00:06, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

australia ,russia , malaysia sports ?

hi i am MBA student i hav been given a task and need to know some facts abt australia, russia and malaysia it is related to sports which are the three top (most viewed sports) of australia ?, Russia And Malaysia and which are the leading teams in these countries? how many people watch/follow this sport in their countries? and does these teams have any mobile apps , for their teams?

i hav been lookig for this data for long now but havent got much kindly i will b v thankful if somebody can tel me abt these above questions regards adeel — Preceding unsigned comment added by 182.185.157.33 (talk) 12:59, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Where have you looked? Try Sport in Australia, Sport in Russia and Sport in Malaysia. There are links within these article for more information. Perhaps someone else can help you with the followers and the mobile apps. Richard Avery (talk) 13:27, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

These questions can be less easy to answer than one might think. Australia has two popular football codes, with a geographic divide for their dominance, Rugby League in NSW and Queensland, and Australian Rules Football in the other states. Unfortunately Sport in Australia has been a battleground for people trying to prove that their preferred sport is the greatest. Aussie Rules has by far the biggest attendances of the two sports. Rugby League has (sometimes had) bigger TV viewership. The latter fact is probably due to that sport aggressively seeking live TV coverage from the early days of television here, while Aussie Rules actively avoided it for some decades. HiLo48 (talk) 22:35, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

The top two most viewed sports in Russia are football (soccer) and ice hockey. The third place is, I think, a tie between volleyball, basketball and bandy.--Itinerant1 (talk) 19:09, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

England local government - 2-tier authorities

Resolved

Do we have a list of the District and Borough Councils that are nested under County Councils, in those areas with a 2-tier arrangement? And if not, would you please point me to a website providing that info, please. thanks --Tagishsimon (talk) 15:48, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Does List of English districts do it for you? - Cucumber Mike (talk) 15:55, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

To be slightly more specific, Non-metropolitan district#List of counties and districts has the info you need. Smurrayinchester 17:10, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks very much. Both of those will be of great help; question answered. I'll try to figure out later why I was unable to find them. --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:23, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Since I put a lot of work into formatting it, I'll put in a shameless plug for a supplementary (and not fully up-to-date) page, Political make-up of local councils in the United Kingdom —— Shakescene (talk) 00:37, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

US Congress -- Sentator vs Congressman

The United State Congress has two parts, the senate and the house of representatives. So why does "Congressman" refer to a Repesentative and not a member of the senate? RudolfRed (talk) 19:16, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

No reason beyond "just because". The convention has developed that "Congressman" just means "Member of the House of Representatives" and "Senator" just means "Member of the Senate". Similar to how in the UK, the name "MP" always refers only to a member of the House of Commons, though members of the House of Lords are also technically "Members of Parliament". Just because you can come up with a reason that it doesn't make perfect sense doesn't mean it isn't the proper convention. --Jayron32 19:20, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Banned user
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Yes Jay put it in the right format,I had no answer other than "just because",but Ray is the best answer right now.74.163.16.52 (talk) 19:24, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

It sometimes does refer to a Senator, usually in the collective sense. But my guess would be that Senator is considered a senior term, so it is preferred. Shadowjams (talk) 19:25, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

See United States House of Representatives#Titles. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 19:55, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

I think there is a reason beyond "just because". The alternative to calling a member of the House of Representatives a "Congressman" is calling them a "Representative", and this could obviously be confused with, say, a union representative, when introduced as "my Representative, Dick Greedy". Thus, referring to "my Congressman, Dick Greedy", is the ideal description. StuRat (talk) 22:41, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, everyone. RudolfRed (talk) 23:12, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Palestinian passports

Hi,

According to this document, the Palestinian authority issues passports or travel documents called "00 passports"; so I thought I could redirect 00 passport to Palestinian Authority passport, but I found no reference to this name on the web. Is this name really used for these passports?

Thanks. Apokrif (talk) 21:44, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

According to this link, 00-passport is a special kind of Palestinian authority passport issued to a person who resided outside the West Bank and Gaza. That is the only English-language reference to the 00-passport that I can find. There is a bunch of references in Swedish and Norwegian. It seems that Sweden and possibly Norway and Denmark are some of the few countries in the world that liberally grant residence permits to Palestinian immigrants, which is why the matter of having a 00-passport vs. a real passport becomes important there.--Itinerant1 (talk) 22:23, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Also note that a redirect does not have the same standard for sourcing as an article. That is, you can create any redirect you want. The only issues likely to come up are if somebody wants to redirect it elsewhere, or create a full article with that name. StuRat (talk) 22:36, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Redirects are also not allowed to violate rules, for example having "Jerk" redirect to some public figure. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:26, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

I would discourage creating redirects which simply confuse readers. A redirect from 00 passport to Palestinian Authority passport is one that is likely to do so in the absence of any info in the article explaining the relevence/connection. Nil Einne (talk) 15:39, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't see how. The only way they would get to the redirect is if they typed in "00 passport", which implies they already know something about it. If so, it's better to put them at the Palestinian Authority passport article than nowhere. StuRat (talk) 17:28, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

A reader may have heard of the term, but have no idea what it means. Or they may simply be search for random things and come across the redirect. In any case, there's no reason to assume a reader knows anything about the term. If you put a redirect with absolutely no explaination, they will still have no idea what it means, except that it may possibly have some connection to Palestinian Authority passports (but they will have absolutely no idea how). They may even come away with the misleading impression an 00 passport is a normal Palestinian Authority passport, on other words come away with an incorrect impression. And it would be hardly their fault when they were redirected to the article, with absolutely zero explaination in the article, to assume this mean it's just a synonym. And even if they have some idea what the term means, as long as the article provides no useful information to the reader on the subject, it's still useless to the reader to be redirected there, they don't come away any more enlighted, if anything they come away more confused why anyone would redirect them to an article which provides no useful information. (And in fact it's possible they may come away with the same mistaken impression as our less informed reader albeit less likely since hopefully they knew enough to not be confused by this.) In other words, it's likely better to leave the redlink red until someone actually bother to write something in the article rather then suggest to the reader they can get useful info from our article on the subject (which they can't). Anyone linking will also realise from the red link we have no info on the subject (when we don't) rather then thinking they're linking to something with at least some info. Nil Einne (talk) 17:01, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

That the two topics are in some way related is itself some info, and they could then use both terms in Google searches, etc., while a redlink provides no info whatsoever. There is, of course, also the hope that the article will one day be expanded to include more complete info, at which point the redirect will be even more useful. StuRat (talk) 17:51, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

A person adding info on the 00 passport to to the PA passport article will hopefully think that perhaps they should redirect 00 passport to the PA passport article rather then just adding info on the 00 passport to some other random article and then hoping the reader will find it. (Failing that, it should be the primary result in a search presuming no other article mentions the 00 passport. And as I've already said, actually a red link tells a reader we probably have no meaningful info on the subject so you'll have to look elsewhere, which presuming that's accurate is very good info. And the connection is so little info to IMO be useless compared to the confusion and misleading impression that anyone will get. (Remember anyone following the redirect will have no idea our article is useless until they actual read it, perhaps multiple times to make sure they didn't miss anything only to finally realise they are not mistaken, they were useless redirected to an article which doesn't tell them about what they came here to find out.) Perhaps a better way to think about it would be to imagine if we did not have a PA passport article. In that case, imagine creating a 00 passport article and the only thing we say in it is "somehow related to the Palestinian Authority passport". Such an article will almost definitely be a candidate for speedy deletion because it's pretty much useless. The fact that we do have a PA passport article doesn't change the picture as long as the PA passport article has no information on the 00 passport, it just means people fail to think of what the redirect is actually doing. Note that whether or not the 00 passport should even redirect to PA passport remaisn unclear to me. Is it distinction the PA makes? Or is it solely a distinction the immigration authorities of certain countries make? If it's the later, are we sure the PA passport article is where this info should be covered rather then in some other article (it may still be, but it's definitely something that needs to be considered, probably by the person actually adding the info on the 00 passport). Nil Einne (talk) 15:46, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

No need to read it twice, when a page find on "00" will get the job done. And hopefully there are (or in the future will be) links to sites which either directly explain it or have contacts who can. StuRat (talk) 20:53, 7 April 2012 (UTC)