Rocksolid Light - alt.usage.english

four or five years

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From: arthurvarr@gmail.com (navi)
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Subject: four or five years
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2024 04:57:55 +0000
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by: navi - Tue, 5 Mar 2024 04:57 UTC

1) He read ten of my articles four or five years after he took my course.

Could he have read some of those ten articles four years after he took my course and the rest five years after?

--
Gratefully,
Navi

Lost in the Twilight Zone of the English language
Interested in structures on the margins of grammaticality
Obsessed with ambiguity

Re: four or five years

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From: peter@pmoylan.org.invalid (Peter Moylan)
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: four or five years
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2024 16:50:35 +1100
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by: Peter Moylan - Tue, 5 Mar 2024 05:50 UTC

On 05/03/24 15:57, navi wrote:

> 1) He read ten of my articles four or five years after he took my
> course.
>
> Could he have read some of those ten articles four years after he
> took my course and the rest five years after?

"Four or five years" is an approximation. We don't know for sure when he
read those articles, but it was roughly four years or maybe five years
after he took the course. It's entirely possible that he read one of the
articles three years after, and another six years after. The reading was
probably spread out over a fuzzy time period.

If I tell my wife "I'll be back in five or ten minutes", it doesn't mean
a probability of 0.5 that I'll be back in precisely five minutes, and a
probability of 0.5 that I'll be back in precisely[1] ten minutes. It
means that I'll be back in about seven minutes, plus or minus an error
margin of several minutes.

[1] For some reason I have trouble typing that word. I must have been
thinking of Elvis Precisely.

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW

Re: four or five years

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From: gadekryds@lundhansen.dk (Bertel Lund Hansen)
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Subject: Re: four or five years
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2024 09:12:39 +0100
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by: Bertel Lund Hansen - Tue, 5 Mar 2024 08:12 UTC

Peter Moylan wrote:

> If I tell my wife "I'll be back in five or ten minutes", it doesn't mean
> a probability of 0.5 that I'll be back in precisely five minutes, and a
> probability of 0.5 that I'll be back in precisely[1] ten minutes. It
> means that I'll be back in about seven minutes, plus or minus an error
> margin of several minutes.
>
> [1] For some reason I have trouble typing that word. I must have been
> thinking of Elvis Precisely.

Were you perhaps presleyed for time?

--
Bertel, Denmark

Re: four or five years

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From: snidely.too@gmail.com (Snidely)
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Subject: Re: four or five years
Date: Tue, 05 Mar 2024 01:38:16 -0800
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by: Snidely - Tue, 5 Mar 2024 09:38 UTC

On Tuesday, Bertel Lund Hansen exclaimed wildly:
> Peter Moylan wrote:
>
>> If I tell my wife "I'll be back in five or ten minutes", it doesn't mean
>> a probability of 0.5 that I'll be back in precisely five minutes, and a
>> probability of 0.5 that I'll be back in precisely[1] ten minutes. It
>> means that I'll be back in about seven minutes, plus or minus an error
>> margin of several minutes.
>>
>> [1] For some reason I have trouble typing that word. I must have been
>> thinking of Elvis Precisely.
>
> Were you perhaps presleyed for time?

That was presaged in earlier visions.

/dps

--
Killing a mouse was hardly a Nobel Prize-worthy exercise, and Lawrence
went apopleptic when he learned a lousy rodent had peed away all his
precious heavy water.
_The Disappearing Spoon_, Sam Kean

Re: four or five years

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by: Sam Plusnet - Tue, 5 Mar 2024 19:12 UTC

On 05-Mar-24 9:38, Snidely wrote:
> On Tuesday, Bertel Lund Hansen exclaimed wildly:
>> Peter Moylan wrote:
>>
>>> If I tell my wife "I'll be back in five or ten minutes", it doesn't mean
>>> a probability of 0.5 that I'll be back in precisely five minutes, and a
>>> probability of 0.5 that I'll be back in precisely[1] ten minutes. It
>>> means that I'll be back in about seven minutes, plus or minus an error
>>> margin of several minutes.
>>>
>>> [1] For some reason I have trouble typing that word. I must have been
>>> thinking of Elvis Precisely.
>>
>> Were you perhaps presleyed for time?
>
> That was presaged in earlier visions.

Presaged: You utter some pearl of wisdom, only to discover that someone
got there before you.

"You will Oscar, you will."

--
Sam Plusnet

Your love life will be... interesting.

interests / alt.usage.english / four or five years

Subject	Author
four or five years	navi
Re: four or five years	Peter Moylan
Re: four or five years	Bertel Lund Hansen
Re: four or five years	Snidely
Re: four or five years	Sam Plusnet