Everything is a number
Why do we feel the need to memorialise the location of tragic events? What is it about having a visual marker, a remembrance, rather than our memory or simple knowledge sufficing? Why do people want to visit the site of tragedy and leave flowers and mementoes, and in some cases erect headstones? What relief are people getting by being there and leaving a marker ― is it territorialising? The psychotherapist Albert Ellis says that it is our thoughts, especially our irrational beliefs, about the events that happen to us that cause the problem, rather than the events themselves. He introduced Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy as a way of minimising despair in the ways people think and feel about the world and the people around them. And while the event itself may be tragic, you are in control of how you react to that event. Are people who create roadside memorials acting rationally or irrationally?
(PI)
Why choose as the basis for this project?
belongs to a group of number called the irrational numbers. Irrational numbers can never be resolved no matter how many decimal points one calculates. You can work on it until the end of the Universe but be no nearer an answer. Though we can approximate and indeed for our day-to-day dealings this is quite adequate (knowing to 39 digits is sufficient to calculate the circumference of the universe accurate to the radius of a single hydrogen atom) we need to change conceptually to grasp its implications. The inability to resolve in a conventional sense mirrors our inability to resolve our understanding about how to quantify the loss and sense of grief we feel when someone dies. The irrationality of the number is paralleled in the irrationality of someone using walking as a way of quantifying a level of grief. Is it legitimate to ask whether this method is any more or any less rational than other methods currently used?
| Walk
|
Distance in a direct line | Calculate r² |
Area of grief |  |
| 1st Walk | 9.86 km | (3.1415 x 9.86)² = | 959.46 km² | |
| 2nd Walk | 4.76 km | (3.1415 x 4.76)² = | 223.61 km² | |
| 3rd Walk |
12.5 km | (3.1415 x 12.5)² = | 1542.03 km² | |
| 4th Walk |
13.7 km | (3.1415 x 13.7)² = | 1852.32 km² | |
| 5th Walk |
12.5 km | (3.1415 x 12.5)² = | 1542.03 km² | |
| 6th Walk |
13.6 km | (3.1415 x 13.6)² = | 1825.37 km² | |
| 7th Walk |
12 km | (3.1415 x 12)² = | 1421.14 km² | |
| 8th Walk |
11.3 km | (3.1415 x 11.3)² = | 1260.18 km² | |
| 9th Walk |
13.3 km | (3.1415 x 13.3)² = | 1745.73 km² | |
| 10th Walk |
11.9 km | (3.1415 x 11.9)² = | 1397.55 km² |
Walking has both physical and psychological effects on the body. We walk for many different reasons, though walking as a system for calculation is perhaps practiced less often. Whatever the reason it has consequential effects. By the time I got to the last walk I should have been fitter, after all by this point I had walked a total of 150.48 km.
My heart beat a total of 251942 times. During an average lifetime, the human heart will beat more than 2.5 billion times [Amazing Heart Facts.] This means that all the walks together took me 0.0100776900% of my lifetime to complete and a single walk took approximately 0.0010077690% of my life to complete.
The total amount of energy I expended can be measured in calories. 1 calorie is the energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 °C. I expended a total of 15687 calories or enough energy to raise 156 grams of water to boiling point. While most standard measurements are now defined in terms of an unchanging natural phenomenon — the metre for instance is the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299792458th of a second — the Kilo is now the only basic unit still defined in terms of a material object. If most standards are basic properties of the Universe it is comforting to know that at least one of them is something someone created and is ultimately subject to change, even if it had a scientific point of origin in that one gram has the mass of one cubic centimetre of water. In theory anyone who wanted to check their Kilo would have to journey to Sèvres, just outside Paris, to compare it to the reference Kilo. Could we introduce a whole new set of standards that allow for a non-definitive interpretation of the Universe?
References
- Singh, Simon. 1997. Fermat's Last Theorem. London, Fourth Estate. p. 51
Links
In memory of solipsism by Muriel Gray The Guardian Thursday September 15, 2005
Shrines are medieval 'throwback' by Jeevan Vasagar The Guardian
The right place for personal memorials Guardian Letters Saturday September 17, 2005
Why is there no war on bathtubs? Gavyn Davies does the maths The Guardian
'Remember Me' Roadside Memorial Sign on UK roads @ http://www.roadpeace.org/
Traumascapes by Maria Tumarkin
Traumascapes Radio National Broadcast Sunday 27 July 2003 with Robyn Williams