I find that explanation a lot more complicated than it needs to be! Back recursion is good for computers, but silly for humans. Start the other way round and use induction: two people are siblings; their children are cousins; their grandchildren are 2nd cousins, etc. The problem with removal is that it's symmetric, which is silly, because we have a different word for nephew/uncle.
Though I'm not convinced that an explanation for "normal people" should include the terms "absolute difference" and "minimum" :)
My explanation would be similar, and for mathematicians definitely use the 0'th cousins terminology, but to try to be clearer, be something like:
* If Joe and Sally are siblings, their children are first cousins * if Joe and Sally are n'th cousins, their children are n+1'th cousins * if Joe the First and Sally are n'th cousins, Joe The N+1 and Sally are first cousins N times removed.
I used to find it very confusing before anyone explained it to me, which took a long time, but it didn't seem especially complicated once someone HAD explained it.
Ah, I see. I don't know, I always remember that "first cousins" is the commonest and synonymous with normal cousins, and from there you can see which is which.
Blogosphere consensus seems to be that the second story is a publicity stunt by that website, which seems to have worked a storm. I wonder what there ad venue spike looks like?
Which may well be why they are trying a publicity stunt! By 'worked', I meant 'got them a lot of irate discussion and news coverage' which if nothing else will have prompted people to take a look.
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andrewducker) wrote2010-01-05 11:02 am
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Back recursion is good for computers, but silly for humans. Start the other way round and use induction: two people are siblings; their children are cousins; their grandchildren are 2nd cousins, etc.
The problem with removal is that it's symmetric, which is silly, because we have a different word for nephew/uncle.
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My explanation would be similar, and for mathematicians definitely use the 0'th cousins terminology, but to try to be clearer, be something like:
* If Joe and Sally are siblings, their children are first cousins
* if Joe and Sally are n'th cousins, their children are n+1'th cousins
* if Joe the First and Sally are n'th cousins, Joe The N+1 and Sally are first cousins N times removed.
I used to find it very confusing before anyone explained it to me, which took a long time, but it didn't seem especially complicated once someone HAD explained it.
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(It therefore seemed particularly silly to me that the explicitly worked example on that page was one in which M=N.)
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*raspberry*
A a person who is part Jewish this INFURIATES me.
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