BBC english and maths quizes

[jack]

Go and see. The quizzes had surprisingly few bits we took issue with.

English: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4246472.stm

18/20 :( I am teh[1] bad speller. One was a complete spelling mistake because I'm bad.

The other was the hyphen question. OK, it should have been obvious, but I thought hyphen compound modifiers were only necessary when confusion would result. When *necessary* I even use n-dashes and m-dashes to denote levels of binding, but he'd hardly likely lost a long brother, had he?

Also, the simile question. It was obvious what they meant, but dictionary.com says "A figure of speech in which two essentially unlike things are compared". If "hands cold as ice" means literally below freezing at one atmosphere, does that count? Obviously "eyes cold as ice" would, but is "he was as tall as a lampost" a simile??

And the Jane's question. As someone who habitually and correctly says Jens' house, I thought their example was bad. If they'd said 'more likely to be correct' ok, but they said 'correct'. The same problem often applies to headlines -- sometimes scientists do do something amusing to a hononym; but these were ok as far as I can see.

Maths: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4263590.stm

See http://www.livejournal.com/users/ewx/313391.html for discussion of flaws, etc. Do use a calculator or google or at least paper if you want to. (I think google would be good at these. IT IS BECOMING ALIVE! :))

He said "20/20 or I'd have fallen on my sword" but I prefer 19 because one of their questions was wrong :) Not that I did.

[1] Irony.

Comments

[ewx.livejournal.com]

TBH it's not left the BBC looking like the most mathematically literate of organizations...

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

They did *pretty* well on the quiz :)

[yrieithydd.livejournal.com]

I got 20! Admittedly I was helped by seeing that you'd said something about hyphens. AIUI, the rule is that when something like long lost is used as an adjective it should be hyphenated, but I think the rules on hyphenation are being relaxed.

I did think to myself on Janes' v Jane's house B unless there is someone called Janes (pronounced as though it were Spanish!)

I haven't tried the Maths yet.

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

The complete OED just defines simile as a "comparison of one thing with another, esp. as an ornament in poetry or rhetoric", and that's how I've always understood the term.

[yrieithydd.livejournal.com]

And I was always taught that as/like where good indicators of it being a simile

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

In English, yes, I think they are. But the definition of simile needs to apply to other languages too, which will represent comparisons in different ways. Old Irish, delightfully enough, has a special form of the adjective - the equative - which means "as (adjective) as". So there are descriptions of things being dubithir druimne daele "as black as a beetle's back", where dubithir is the equative form of the adjective dub! Middle Welsh has a few equatives too...

[yrieithydd.livejournal.com]

Modern Welsh still has equatives, such as cystal `as/so good'.

But I was thinking in terms of spotting similes in English for the purposes of tests like the BBC one rather than being cross-linguistic!

Old Irish, delightfully enough,

[grins] People do not usually use Old Irish and delightfully in the same sentence! For some reason they think it is scary and difficult not delightful!

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

[grins] People do not usually use Old Irish and delightfully in the same sentence! For some reason they think it is scary and difficult not delightful!

It was always my favourite medieval language as an undergraduate. (Most of my year thought I was mad then too.) The literature is fantastic too, despite (or perhaps because of) being largely incomprehensible. In fact, that reminds me of a charming Old Irish gloss on a biblical manuscript, containing a ridiculously long word: .i. ataat mesai Dae nephchomthetarrachtai "i.e. the commandments of God are incomprehensible".

[yrieithydd.livejournal.com]

I vaguely remember that gloss too!

I like Old Irish too. Though I've not touched it for a while now. I'm trying to work out whether I ought to know you. Are/were you a fellow ASNC?

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

I was indeed an ASNaC, from 1992-6. Then I moved to Linguistics for my PhD.

[yrieithydd.livejournal.com]

Long before my time! (Even had I been an undergrad here, it'd've been before my time!)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I'm pinching that for english!

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

What, the concept of equatives, or the beetle simile? It is great, isn't it, how the translation manages to alliterate and have internal rhyme, just like the original!

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I meant equatives. I'll stick with sloe black fishing boat as my specific example :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

See previous rant[1] on "they took my oed away" :) It does seem superfluous to describe non-(descriptive/poetic/rhetoric) comparisons as similes...

[yrieithydd.livejournal.com]

I just got 20/20. What was the question which was wrong?

More comments on my LJ

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Did I say that? I had a number of nitpicks, but I don't think the real answer was ever in doubt (except for the sqrt question before it was fixed).

[bachlover.livejournal.com]

Now, I should have read your post properly before trying the questions. I got the hyphen one wrong too...:-( I have a feeling that's how I'd have written that sentence. So much still to learn.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

No you shouldn't; that would be cheating :) But see speculation that the hyphen isn't necessarily necessary[1].

[1] I did get that spelling right, right? :)

[minipoppy.livejournal.com]

I think it is getting to be more and more a personal thing/house style thing about hyphens. My company is against them in their books. I worked on a process of deduction - none of the other punctuation marks were needed so I figured it must be a hyphen.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I like knowing copy-editing people :)

"I worked on a process of deduction - none of the other punctuation marks were needed so I figured it must be a hyphen."

That's what I tried to do. Unfortunately, it occurred to me that someone might consider a '!' necessary. I didn't agree, but I didn't agree with the '-' either, though I admit with more thought I should have done.

[minipoppy.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, I just did the maths test and got, like, 13! Although I *was* rushing a little bit. Never was much of a mathamaperson

[sonicdrift.livejournal.com]

Calculator? Pah! And you call yourself a mathmo!

M reckons I cheated by using paper.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I didn't use either. But there's a limit to how much calculation in your head is virtuous; insane amounts of mental arithmetic is a valuble skill, but isn't really maths. Muppets use calculators to solve quadratics, but if a question is complex enough it's a valid mathematical technique to solve it numerically, possibly using this to inform later abstract work.

Remind me again what you do for five hours a day? :p :)