You know what, I guess 7 years ago (or thereabouts), I decided that I wanted to learn everything there was to know about decorative concrete Virginia installations. Therefore, I resolved that I would first, and foremost, need to go and visit a facility that specializes in stamped and decorative concrete installations and designs. So, I found one-Decocreteva.com-and arranged a 3-hour tour. What I can tell you is that I was literally knocked out of my rather bouncy boots by the total amount of information that someone needs to understand in order to specialize in the topic of decorative concrete design. If I started learning everything about it right now, I might know as much or perhaps more than the top experts in about five to ten years. Well now, I’ve got quite a lot of work cut out for me, don’t I. Better hit the books and get started. But I’m tired! I don’t feel like starting! Well, as Miss Mother Maple once said, star-like people don’t do things because they like to do them; they do them because they need to do them. I not only want to learn everything there is to learn about concrete systems, but I want to be able to singlehandedly do the installation of concrete systems without help from a stranger for industrial, residential, and commercial applications. With a lot of work and a little bit of luck, I should be able to learn everything about them very soon. And then it will be a grtand day. A very, very, happy day. I may novel sitting on a desk that nobody quite wants to read, but right now I know a thing or two about industrial flooring systems.
For a few years, CBS has been running a television show called Numb3rs. The premise is the standard take off on the brothers-solving-mysteries cliché that has been around since at least the Hardy Boys. Of course, Numbers has some thngs that are different – the boys are employed and older. Don Eppes, the older of the pair, runs a team of FBI agents based in Los Angeles – a fair step above the amateur sleuthing of the Hardy boys. Charlie Eppes, the younger brother, is a math genius and a professor at the fictional “Cal Sci”.
Each week, Don and his street-savvy FBI team encounter a problem, usually a time sensitive one, which is just too tough to figure out through traditional police work. Set your watch by it; Professor Charlie Eppes and his team of nerdy yet smart mathematicians are able to use some form of advanced mathematics to accomplish a some inventive tasks from deciphering where a kidnapping will happen to the contents of boxes.
And while a great deal of that is Hollywood magic, taking lab theory and shoehorning it into unrealistic time periods with even less realistic amounts of data, there is one part of the show that I always admire. During the hour-long show, the young Professor Eppes must give an explanation to a complex, doctoral-level mathematical system in a way that a team of federal agents can understand. This happens every single episode with such predictability that the character in the show have started to expect it, even making jokes and attempting to give their own explanations.
Charlie’s explanations are clearly a plot device to convince the audience that his brilliant mathematical insights aren’t simply a weekly deus ex machine. However, just as Charlie has to explain how his math models the real world, the use of software estimation can often seem just as improbable. True, you can sit back and say “Well, the program relies on parametric modeling of our current situation,” but that look is far more likely to generate blank stares than anything else.
Article provided by Galorath, Cost Estimating Software Tools.
