Great Hobbies of Great Minds



alienator

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Jun 10, 2004
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Scientists don't just dig the lab. Einstein had the violin, the piano, and copious womynz. Feynman had his bongo's, and Arthur Eddington, of the UK, had cycling. In fact, Eddington even formulated a cycling metric, the Eddington Number: From Wikipedia:
Eddington number (cycling) Eddington is credited with devising a measure of a cyclist's long distance riding achievements. The Eddington Number in this context is defined as E, the number of days a cyclist has cycled more than E miles.[9][10] For example an Eddington Number of 70 would imply that a cyclist has cycled more than 70 miles in a day on 70 occasions. Achieving a high Eddington number is difficult since moving from, say, 70 to 75 will probably require more than five new long distance rides since any rides shorter than 75 miles will no longer be included in the reckoning. Eddington's best E-number is a very impressive 84.[11]
I'm disappointed that limmerickman hasn't already posted about this.
 
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Just as a round number, I'm fairly confident my E number is over 25, and 30 is probable. I just don't get much time to do long distance rides, but I do manage 8-10 50+ milers per year, so that number should go up to 50 or so over the next 3 years.
 
Interesting, never heard of Eddington's E metric before.

A quick sort of data taken from power files in the past six years gets me an E number of ~66. IOW, I've got 66 days with mileage of 66.72 or more and 67 days with mileage of 66.66 or more.

I bet some long distance touring cyclists or folks that love century rides would rack up some very big numbers.

-Dave
 
Originally Posted by alienator .

Scientists don't just dig the lab. Einstein had the violin, the piano, and copious womynz. Feynman had his bongo's, and Arthur Eddington, of the UK, had cycling. In fact, Eddington even formulated a cycling metric, the Eddington Number:
From Wikipedia: Eddington number (cycling)
Eddington is credited with devising a measure of a cyclist's long distance riding achievements. The Eddington Number in this context is defined as E, the number of days a cyclist has cycled more than E miles.[9][10] For example an Eddington Number of 70 would imply that a cyclist has cycled more than 70 miles in a day on 70 occasions. Achieving a high Eddington number is difficult since moving from, say, 70 to 75 will probably require more than five new long distance rides since any rides shorter than 75 miles will no longer be included in the reckoning. Eddington's best E-number is a very impressive 84.[11]

I'm disappointed that limmerickman hasn't already posted about this.
Sorry to disappoint you, Alienator but I've never heard of an "E" number before reading your post above, so thanks for sharing this info.

An E number of 84 is pretty impressive!
 
limerickman said:
Sorry to disappoint you, Alienator but I've never heard of an "E" number before reading your post above, so thanks for sharing this info. An E number of 84 is pretty impressive!
I think it's damned impressive.
 
Interesting I didn't know all of that. It is really great to have hobbies like these. Playing instruments or the arts can really give you a great deal of gratification.
 
I think music truly does engage and inspire folks all of kinds. Perhaps those geniuses with their super-high IQ's are attracted to music because of its mathematical properties. And, I guess it also helps one to unwind and get out of their heads for a little while.
 

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