Tag: math

Qualitative or quantitative: some thoughts on automobile fuel gauge design

~ g BRETT miller (he/him/his)

The absolute best user interface idea ever in a car is that little arrow next to the fuel pump icon on the fuel gauge, you know the one I mean. (And if you’ve never noticed this before, you’re welcome 🙂

Maybe not absolutely necessary after you’ve had your car for a while, but very (very) useful when driving an unfamiliar car, like a rental. Other than that, I have to admit never really paying much attention to the fuel gauge in a car (at least not until the low fuel light starts blinking!). Not until I found myself in one of those aforementioned rental cars, anyway.

In my experience the fuel gauge in most vehicles, such as my Nissan Frontier, is based on textual indicators, specifically Full and Empty.

Fuel gauge in a Nissan Frontier

On the other hand, the VW Passat I once rented had a a gauge based on numerical indicators, with a full tank represented by 1 and an empty tank interestingly not indicated by either text or number.

Fuel gauge in VW Passat
Fuel Gauge in VW Passat

Having the fuel gauge top out at 1, with the halfway point being 1/2 and empty (presumably) 0, is somewhat reasonable in a mathematical sense. And interestingly, the value of “half” works in either/both the textual and numerical senses.

But most people aren’t really interested in the math of the situation, they’re not thinking, “Oh, I’m almost at zero fuel.” They’re thinking (as the low fuel light blinks at them), “Oh, the tank is almost empty.”

I can’t help wondering how the systems engineers and the user experience team at VW decided to use 1 to indicate a full tank. What was the decision-making process, and what were the evaluation criteria? Is this a case of engineers being engineers? Perhaps a cultural thing, something uniquely German? Or is there something else at play here?

If you know, please share.

James Gleick’s “Isaac Newton” a great introduction

~ g BRETT miller (he/him/his) ~ 3 Comments

After reading Quicksilver, the first book in Neal Stephenson‘s Baroque Cycle, I became very interested to learn more about some the historical figures around whom the story revolved – Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle, John Wilkens, Christopher Wren, …, and Isaac Newton, the founders and early members of the Royal Society. Given my interest in physics, optics, and math, especially Isaac Newton.

Fortunately for me, James Gleick‘s biography of Newton, simply titled Isaac Newton, was published earlier that year (2003). Gleick was not new to me – both Chaos: Making a New Science and Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, have a place on my bookshelves – so I had high hopes for his biography of Newton. I was not disappointed.

Chances are you’ve heard of Isaac Newton, if for nothing else than the fact that he came up with the idea of gravity when he saw an apple fall from a tree. (Which, by the way, is a vast oversimplification.) You may have even heard of his 3 laws of motion or that he invented – some might say discovered – the calculus. You may even think that he invented calculus so he could figure out his laws of motion. (As it turns out, he used geometry.)

Newton didn’t actually publish – or care to publish – his work in mathematics, or anything else, until someone else published similar work. Unlike the rest of the fellows of the Royal Society, who were interested in sharing their new found knowledge as much as possible, Newton experimented and discovered and wrote to satisfy his own curiosity, not that of anyone else.  Only in the very recent past have the many documents of Newton come to light, and it is through these many documents that Gleick tells this unique story of arguably the greatest mind ever.

Considering the subject, the book is relatively short with just under 200 pages of main text and about 50 pages of notes. It is a pretty quick read, though I did find that flipping back and forth to the end notes tended to slow me down. And if you are looking for detailed discussion and analysis of the actual content of Newton’s various writings, this is not your book.

If, however, you want to gain an understanding of what drove Newton, of why he wanted to figure things out, and get a glimpse into his incredible mind, this is an excellent book with which to begin.