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Watch your tongue!

Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 9:25 am
by Alexandre
I like sci. writing - “chromatograms with antioxidant activity”, or “data acquired from cats and dogs…”

Re: Watch your tongue!

Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 9:30 am
by Peter Apps
I like sci. writing - “chromatograms with antioxidant activity”, or “data acquired from cats and dogs…”
And the problem with data from cats and dogs is ??

Peter

Re: Watch your tongue!

Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 3:16 pm
by HbJ
I guess it's about the ambiguity: Verbatim one could think that the data was directly acquired from cats and dogs like from a chromatography interface/integrator.

And nothing's wrong with data from cats and dogs btw. :)

I hope your African Wild Dogs project goes well!

Re: Watch your tongue!

Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 3:33 pm
by Peter Apps
Thanks for the good wishes - I have three papers under referee's exacting scrutiny, so I can use all the positive vibes that I can get :wink: .

Alexandre's first example " chromatograms with antioxidant activity" doesn't mean anything, however you read it. "Data acquired from cats and dogs" is just shorthand for something like "data acquired from weighing cats and dogs", which in turn is shorthand for "data acquired by measuring the gravitational attraction of cats and dogs at the Earth's surface" etc etc. Being unabiguous can often mean being very tedious !

Anyway, I have to go and acquire some data from dog poo :roll:

Peter

Re: Watch your tongue!

Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2012 3:21 am
by HbJ
Well, it's for the dogs Peter so it's well worth it.

On a side note, I recently got a resin sample that smells like vomit when it's drying. Guess who's to find out what that smell is...

Re: Watch your tongue!

Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2012 7:41 am
by Peter Apps
Well, it's for the dogs Peter so it's well worth it.

On a side note, I recently got a resin sample that smells like vomit when it's drying. Guess who's to find out what that smell is...
So not a pleasant candidate for GC-sniffing ! Good luck with it.

Peter

Re: Watch your tongue!

Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2012 4:00 pm
by paulw
"Data acquired from cats and dogs" is just shorthand for something like "data acquired from weighing cats and dogs", which in turn is shorthand for "data acquired by measuring the gravitational attraction of cats and dogs at the Earth's surface" etc etc.

Or it could mean that you hired cats and dogs as consultants to work through a particularly tedious area, and that you were using the data they provided to you.

Re: Watch your tongue!

Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2012 5:39 pm
by Consumer Products Guy
On Internet forums, oftentimes totally unrelated stuff that's included in questions, while the needed information is missing. Example:

My orange VW beetle won't start - what could be the problem?

Obviously, the color of the VW has nothing to do with the no-start issue. No start could be from hundreds of reasons, like dead battery, bad starter, no fuel, bad switch, bad cables, points not opening, etc.