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Sawbucks and Sawhorses

Tue, 2 Jan 2024, 06:21 PM (-06:00) Creative Commons License

Let’s talk about “sawbucks” again. Steely-eyed mjb observed that they seem to be the same as “sawhorses”. I mean there are sawhorses and there are sawbucks.

Go look. I’ll wait.

Same thing, right? But no. Check out this  article about building a sawbuck out of logs, and take a moment to look at that the guy’s sawbuck.

Not a sawhorse.

I’m reminded (no surprise perhaps) of linear algebra. It was all about matrices. We added, subtracted, and inverted them. We diagonalized and decomposed them. We did all this, and then we were done … until I find out later, in the twilight of my years, that a matrix is just a particular way to calculate a linear transformation. The matrices are mere representations. The important concepts are the transformations. I missed the memo!

So don’t wait until your twilight years! Read the memo. Know your concepts. A sawhorse is a sawhorse, and a sawbuck is something else. 

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