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[jack]

In golf, low scores are good, and there is a term "par", meaning the average expected number of shots to pot a ball in a particular hole: if your number of shots is below par, that's good, and above par, that's bad.

For a long time non-golf metaphoric uses of "par" bothered me. Eventually I decided "below par" could be used to mean (or correspondingly, "above par" the opposite) either numerically lower than average, or worse than average.

This has the advantage that it makes sense to people both ways round, but the disadvantage that the meaning has to be inferred from context. Are we ok with this, or should we attempt to recapture "below par" to mean "worse than average" or even "both worse and numerically lower higher than average"? Was it ever used that restrictedly?

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[ewx.livejournal.com]

Um, would that be a three-paragraph one-liner?

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[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I applied "one-liner" to not just one-line posts, but throwaway nearly-one-line thoughts, the idea being that eg. "It's snowing" might want to be filtered out if one's reading the archives. And then I never remove it if I go on talking about this throwaway thing to an extent that would make an average-long post by anyone else :)

[simont]

This reminds me of a thing I was thinking this morning: the words "forward" and "backward", with regard to time, are used in a confused fashion.

If I talk about travelling forward in time in the SF sense, it clearly means I'm heading for a time later than now. Travelling backward, vice versa. But if I talk about moving a deadline "forward", it generally means it's becoming earlier, not later.

My best rationalisation for this until recently has been based on the metaphor that I'm moving along a train track in one direction, and fixed things on the calendar such as deadlines are heading towards me on the other line, moving in the other direction. So if either I or the deadline moves "forward", then the effect is the same: we reach each other sooner. And this also works in the particularly complicated case of putting the clocks forward: one might make a case either way for which of me and the deadline has moved, but in either case it's clear that putting the clocks "forward" means there's less time to elapse until I meet the deadline.

I was satisfied with this until this morning, when I was talking about one of the functions of Christmas being to cheer you up in the cold winter months, and observed that since February is often more bitingly cold than December it's when one might most need cheering up, and hence if I had free choice I might move Christmas ... forward ... a month or two. And try as I might, I can't bring myself to think that "backward" would have been a better word there, even though since Christmas is a calendar event this is directly inconsistent with the rule I describe in the previous paragraph.

So I now lack any sensible way to think about all this; I've convinced myself that my previous apparently-sensible theory doesn't in fact correspond to my linguistic intuition, and I suspect that in fact my linguistic intuition is simply hopelessly confused.

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

I've always been confused by moving deadlines/meetings/etc "forward" and "backward". Until recently I used the words the other way round from the rest of the world, because I assumed they were meant in the time-travel sense. Now, I know what their accepted meanings are and do use them correctly, but still find them counter-intuitive, and have to stop and think about it when I or someone else uses them.

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

OTOH, if you do find the train-track metaphor intuitive (which I don't), then the Christmas counterexample doesn't necessarily break it. Deadlines are rushing towards you and you can move them further away from you or nearer to you; but when you say "Christmas should be in February" you're probably not thinking of this coming Christmas, which is an event rushing towards you currrently a month and a half away, but Christmas in general, which is a recurring event in a calendar you're conceptually looking at from outside, not coming towards you on a track.

In the same way, I think, you might want to move the end of your working day (as a general recurring event) back to 4:30pm, but if you're planning to have a meeting today at 5 you might bring that forward to 4:30.

(Hope that makes sense - it's proving harder to express verbally than I expected.)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

OTOH, if you do find the train-track metaphor intuitive (which I don't)

I found it intuitive after thinking about it for a bit, as it were :)

[teleute.livejournal.com]

I have always hated this. I just say "moved" with a qualifier, because neither 'backward' nor 'forward' ever make sence to me. And I always end up thinking one and saying the other or confusing everyone else (or just confusing myself, which is nearly as bad). Avoidance is a suitable tactic I think.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I remember studying Macbeth, there was a bit about a vision of three tragic events, the third being behind, and the teacher asking us what it meant, and I was seized with introspection about the difference between the event being behind, ie. having already happened to you, and being behind, ie. approaching you to arrive just after the other two. (And was annoyed that the less you consider, the better answers you give :))

Your analysis sounds good to me, it might not really make sense, but those are the right metaphors...

Moving an event "forward" now reminds me of saying "next tuesday" -- I've always felt it's of uncertain meaning, and though everyone else seems sure, they seem sure about different things. I'll say it on monday, tuesday or wednesday, but avoid it on other days of the week. Though I've never actually had a problem with "forward" (not that I *do* often move meetings forward), I infer the meaning is usually clear from context even if not consistent.

[teleute.livejournal.com]

I can't think of any situation in which I would use the term 'under par' to mean something that was both below average and numerically superior/better han average. Have you got a situation in mind you could share so I can think about it some more?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oops, that was my typo. I edited, meant, like it was in golf.

[david jones (from livejournal.com)]

Why aren't golf pars fractions?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I don't actually play golf... why would they be? Fractions of what?

[david jones (from livejournal.com)]

I don't play either.

But wouldn't one expect that the expected number of hits before the ball went into the hole was, in general, not a whole number?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh, I see. Yes, of course. But I don't know what the distribution is, I don't know if it *is* a mean, it might be better described as a mode.

I had a quick look online, but couldn't work out what's actually typical, but get the impression that par is actually reasonably objective. That if par is, say, two strokes to the green and two puts, then a good player can do that most of the time, but you have to get noticeably lucky to do that in *fewer* shots -- your drive would have to be *twice* as good to need only one of them.

Of course, if you're comparing your score to par, the actual mean is probably the correct answer for the most fair result. But giving a deviation might be more relevant.