thenumbers, a weblog by George Girton

For richer or for richer . . . . . oct 29 2002 — math5.dat

It's a measure of the dark fall season that I haven't finished reading Paul Krugman's NY Times article on our rising plutocracy. If he doesn't come up with some graphs and some sources, I may have to draw some.

If you have the heart, wander of to the NY Times and read For Richer by Paul Krugman pools=XML, Blog, Ruby

Where did the women go? . . . . . oct 23 2002 — math3.dat

Say, speaking about women in Saudi Arabia, what happened to them all? I was looking for an example of a population pyramid graph, and found this on-line version in the Census Bureau's international database. The population age pyramid for Saudi Arabia 2002 by gender, is very unbalanced.

Other countries' profiles do not look like this. Saudi Arabia population pyramid, 2002

What is the reason for this, assuming it is correct?

Shorter life expectancy for women in SA?
Changed cultural practice 25 years ago?
Women are 'under counted' in SA census?
Massive in-migration of males or on the other hand out-migration of female Saudi refugees?

Something to wonder about vis-a-vis Saudi Arabia...

pools=XML, Blog, Ruby

an unusual dream . . . . . oct 22 2002 — math4.dat

One of my college classmates posted the barrel count of oil that various oil companies import from the middle east to our college classmates newsgroup email, and I had an unusual dream about it last night.

I dreamed that the list manager wrote back to everyone saying "this information is so important that I am going to add it to the headers of every message, so you will always be able to refer to it."

It was a dream about adding it to the headers, but the barrel count email was real. here are the numbers from the email he sent:

Major companies that import Middle Eastern oil 
(for the period 9/1/00 -8/31/01).
Shell................ 205,742,000 barrels
Chevron/Texaco....... 144,332,000 barrels�
Exxon /Mobil......... 130,082,000 barrels�
Marathon............. 117,740,000 barrels�
Amoco................ 62,231,000 barrels�
If you do the math at $30/barrel, 
these imports amount to over $18 BILLION.
Here are some large companies that 
do not import Middle Eastern oil:
Citgo 		0 barrels
Sunoco 		0 barrels
Conoco 		0 barrels
Sinclair	0 barrels
BP/Phillips 0 barrels
Hess 		0 barrels
All of this information is available from the Department
of Energy and can be easily documented. Refineries located 
in the U.S. are required to state where they get their oil 
and how much they are importing. They report on a monthly
basis.

Of course, it's a good idea to conserve gasoline, too. Now I'm going to go check my email headers and see what's there...

An internet search on some of these companies turned up information that seemed to suggest that some of them are owned by others. Eventually another classmate posted a link to the Urban Legends site dealing with this popular email that pops up from time to time. pools=XML, Blog, Ruby

No Smoking! . . . . . oct 15 2002 — math2.dat

It has been 6,123 days since Irene and I stopped smoking on January 10, 1986. But as she says, "who's counting?"

At a pack a day each that would be over $70,000 at today's prices. Gee, I think I'll run right out and buy her a Mercedes!

I think when we get to 6,237 days in 2003 we'll have to throw a party.

pools=XML, Blog, Ruby

Pakistan elections . . . . . oct 12 2002 — math1.dat

To understand the recent elections in Pakistan, you need an alphabet soup decoder ring to understand the parties, a sense of the surreal, perhaps a sense of impending doom, a knowledge of geography beyond where the airbases and madrassas are located, and a grim determination to care. I hasten to add that I don't even begin to understand the elections, which are pretty interesting when you consider that they're the first full elections in Pakistan since 1997.

There is a national assembly with 272 seats, and four regional assemblies: Punjab with 297, Sindh with 130, NWFP with 99, and Balochistan with 51.

You can see the results yourself by looking at this Pakistani magazine site, but in reading about these results, I noticed a most intriguing thing about the representation, from an election story on October 11 before in the English-language 'Dawn', published in Karachi:

More than 72 million registered voters aged 18 and above from a population of 140 million were entitled to vote.

A total of 2,098 candidates were standing for 272 general seats of the National Assembly for which as many as 64,475 polling stations with 164,718 polling booths were set up.

A total of 5,110 candidates stood for 577 general seats of four provincial assemblies of Punjab (297), Sindh (130), NWFP (99) and Balochistan (51).

The full 371-seat Punjab Assembly will have 66 reserved seats for women and eight for minorities, the 168-seat Sindh Assembly 29 for women and nine for minorities, the 124-seat NWFP Assembly 22 for women and three for minorities, and the 65-seat Balochistan Assembly 11 for women and three for minorities.

But wait, what's this? Reserved seats for women and minorities? Do they vote the same as general seats, or do they just kind of 'hang out' when the Assemblies meet. Doing the math, it seems like the 728 regional representatives reserve 128 seats or 17.5 percent of the seats for women and 23 seats for minorities. It's all very confusing, and makes it even more difficult to determine the meaning of the results. pools=XML, Blog, Ruby

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