Today is Ada Lovelace Day and I was encouraged to post something by Tara.
I was going to refer people to this excellent collection of biographies of female mathematicians. Bet you didn’t know that Florence Nightingale was a pioneer in statistics as well as nursing.
However, a practical issue has come up that deserves attention. The Gaga Law has been doing the rounds of the ‘nets and I think it is wrong. If anyone knows who created this please let me know so I can link back. Is the origin this Facebook fan page?
There are a few different two versions but the one I saw first was:
(RAH)2(AH)3 + [ROMA(1+MA)] + (GA)2 + (OOH)(LA)2
The equation is supposed to represent the chorus of the Lady Gaga song Bad Romance.
Rah rah ah ah ah!
Roma roma ma!
Ga ga ooh la la!
I love that someone made an equation out of this! But I think they didn’t quite get it right. Basically, there isn’t consistency in the use of addition and multiplication.
Spelling out the equation we get (removing capitalisation for ease of reading):
Rah.rah.ah.ah.ah + roma + roma.ma + ga.ga + ooh.la.la
Note that “.” is shorthand for multiply. Can you see the problem? What does multiplication mean? What does addition mean? What is the difference between them?
One way to break down the lyrics would be to add every element.
(RAH)2 + (AH)3 + [ROMA(1+MA)] + (GA)2 + (OOH) + (LA)2
= Rah.rah + ah.ah.ah + roma + roma.ma + ga.ga + ooh.la.la
But this doesn’t distinguish the lines of the stanza.
I suggest that it would be better to state that lyrics on the same line are multiplied and lyrics on a different line are added. This keeps the lines of the stanza defined. As soon as you see an addition sign you start a new line.
(RAH)2(AH)3 + (ROMA)2(MA) + (GA)2(OOH)(LA)2
= Rah.rah.ah.ah.ah
+ roma.roma.ma
+ ga.ga.ooh.la.la
That’s a bit more consistent, however the second line loses its difference and therefore the quirk level reduces.
Two other possibilities for the second line would be:
[(ROMA)3]/2 or (ROMA)2(ROMA/2) but that’s making a big assumption that people would understand that half of ROMA was MA. Also, it’s not obvious what half of the cube of ROMA actually is.
So there you go. Pedantic? Moi?
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Bonus nerdiness 1: At first I thought the creator of the equation had made a mistake with the exponents. I was wrong. Here’s a simple (though unpleasantly coloured) introduction to exponents. http://oakroadsystems.com/math/expolaws.htm
Bonus nerdiness 2: What’s up with my post title?
Oh lord! This is amazing. I don’t know you, but I’m fairly certain that I may have just fallen a little bit in love with you! I’m not a math nerd, but I am a linguistics nerd, and this equation has warmed the cockles of my morphological-tree-making heart! Thank you thank you thank you.
oc
Assuming each letter is a variable (a la linear algebra), doesn’t yours reduce to:
R2A5H5 + ROM3A3+ G2A3O3HL
?
Thanks Owen. That’s very sweet.
JawnBC: Yes, I should have stated that each “sound” is irreducible. But following your logic the last expression would be “G^2 A^4 O^2 H L^2″. Watch out behind you! There’s a nerd!!