Math Power: Physicist Calculates Way out of Traffic Ticket

Ever talk your way out of a traffic ticket? Bet it's a painful memory, isn't it?

Dmitri Krioukov, a physicist at the University of California, San Diego, was pulled over for jumping a stop sign. The fine would have been $400. But Krioukov tried something that most traffic courts probably haven't seen: He wrote an academic paper to argue why he ought to be found not guilty. Its title: "The Proof of Innocence."

The judge bought it, says Krioukov. He was acquitted. Krioukov posted his paper online and gave it a subtitle: "A way to fight your traffic tickets. The paper was awarded a special prize of $400 that the author did not have to pay to the state of California."

Here's the abstract. If you were a busy judge, who'd studied law more intently than mathematics in school, how would you react to it?

"We show that if a car stops at a stop sign, an observer, e.g., a police officer, located at a certain distance perpendicular to the car trajectory, must have an illusion that the car does not stop, if the following three conditions are satisfied: (1) the observer measures not the linear but angular speed of the car; (2) the car decelerates and subsequently accelerates relatively fast; and (3) there is a short-time obstruction of the observer's view of the car by an external object, e.g., another car, at the moment when both cars are near the stop sign."

The paper is four pages of dense reading, filled with equations and graphs, but here's the simple version:

Krioukov argues the officer, watching at an angle about 100 feet away, confused the car's actual (or linear) speed with its angular speed -- the rate at which it seemed to go by. If you'd like an analogy, think of yourself on a railroad platform as the express roars past. As the train approaches in the distance, it doesn't seem to move much, but as it passes you -- going no faster -- it certainly seems to race by.

Krioukov claims he did stop and restart quickly, and the officer missed it.

Finally -- and this is the fun part -- Krioukov says there was another car blocking the officer's view at the moment of truth. He was driving a Toyota Yaris, a subcompact, and something bigger (perhaps, he suggests, the size of a Subaru Outback) was in the lane next to him as he jammed on the brakes.

Why did he jam on the brakes? Krioukov, in slightly broken English (he grew up in Russia) puts it right there in the paper:

"The author/defendant (D.K.) ... was badly sick with cold on that day. In fact, he was sneezing while approaching the stop sign. As a result he involuntary pushed the brakes very hard."

The judge chose not to fight him. Next case, please.

But Physics Central, which first reported this story, says Krioukov concluded with a challenge: "I want to ask the readership to please find the flaw in the argument."

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Mitt Romney Didn't Flip-Flop on Stay-at-Home Moms

April 16, 2012 Print

We can't call it a gaffe per se. Former Gov. Mitt Romney said it months ago, and it didn't seem remotely controversial at the time. But in light of last week's controversy involving Hilary Rosen and Ann Romney's skirmish in the "Mommy Wars," the remark has taken on a fresh significance.

Here's what Romney said, as heard in a video unearthed by MSNBC's Chris Hayes:

I wanted to increase the work requirement ... I said, for instance, that even if you have a child two years of age, you need to go to work. And people said, "Well, that's heartless," and I said "No, no, I'm willing to spend more giving daycare to allow those parents to go back to work. It'll cost the state more providing that daycare, but I want the individuals to have the dignity of work."

[Vote: Will the Hilary Rosen-Ann Romney Uproar Matter for the Election?]

The Washington Post's Ezra Klein pounces:

So what Mitt Romney was saying, in other words, was that he believes poor mothers should go out and get jobs rather than to stay home with their children. He believes that going out and getting a job gives mothers —and everyone else —"the dignity of work." And so, finally, he believes that staying home and taking care of children is not "work," and does not fulfill a "work requirement," and does not give poor mothers "the dignity of work." And he believes all of this strongly enough that, as governor of Massachusetts, he signed those beliefs into law.

Much as I enjoy pouncing on Romney, I don't think the contradiction is as stark as Hayes and Klein make it out to be. In my last post on this topic, I tried to make the case that we should look at a household with children as a single economic unit, a joint venture, irrespective of whether just one or both parents worked outside the home. A job in the marketplace plus domestic labor and childrearing; or two jobs in the marketplace plus shared responsibilities for domestic labor and childrearing—the particulars of the arrangement should not matter. What matters is total output: as measured in widgets made, plus human citizens molded.

[See a collection of political cartoons on Mitt Romney]

In the case of single mothers, however, the widgets are missing. Now, contra comedian Chris Rock, I realize most women don't typically choose to be single mothers. I realize, further, that the children of single mothers can turn out perfectly well (they can even become president!). And I certainly don't mean to imply that single mothers lack dignity in any sense.

But the reality Mitt Romney was trying to convey, back in January, is that some form of productivity, in addition to childrearing, is an essential feature in the life of a family. As I explain to my kids when they ask why mommy and daddy can't both stay home every day—"Somebody has to do it."

Alas, that includes single moms, too.

Tags:Ann Romney, Mitt Romney, 2012 presidential election, politics

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