{"id":6568,"date":"2019-06-08T12:20:35","date_gmt":"2019-06-08T10:20:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cmc.deusto.eus\/enzuazua\/?p=6568"},"modified":"2022-03-21T07:28:23","modified_gmt":"2022-03-21T06:28:23","slug":"z-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cmc.deusto.eus\/enzuazua\/z-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Z"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Every language has its own alphabet, though it may be largely shared with others. For instance Basque and Spanish have very different origins, histories and structures but they are both based on variants of the Latin alphabet. That alphabet is indeed shared with much of Europe and the rest of the world. This is helpful (and how!) when travelling, because even if you can\u2019t understand what a sign says, if it is written in the same alphabet you can at least copy the characters onto a sheet of paper and look for a translation. Things are much more complicated when you have to deal with a different alphabet, such as Arabic or Chinese characters. Hence the expression \u201cit might as well be Chinese\u201d, which we will have to think about phasing out now that the world\u2019s centre of gravity is shifting (or reverting?) towards China<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Boarding panel at international airport<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

An\nalphabet is a menu with a limited number of ingredients \u2013 twenty-odd letters in\nour case \u2013 which are combined to form words, which in turn are hybridised to\nform sentences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\nmight seem that the number of sentences that can possibly be formed must be\nfairly limited, but this is clearly not the case. Books and newspapers have\nbeen written, speeches given, poems recited and songs sung for centuries and we\nhave never run out yet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nart of literature consists precisely of constructing new stories and narratives\non the basis of that apparently meagre menu of 20-odd letters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nalphabet is to communication and literature what numbers are to science and\ntechnology. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However,\nit is odd that we use the alphabet when it comes to putting groups of people in\norder. Surely it is numbers that are supposed to be used to order things, isn\u2019t\nit? Then why not put people in numerical rather than alphabetical order? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\ndon\u2019t need to think about it too long to realise that the alphabet is essential\nand unbeatable at doing this job. Imagine what school registers would look like\nif pupils were listed in the order of their own or their parents\u2019 ID card\nnumbers. The whole thing would be an absurd mess. Of course, we need given\nnames to know what to call children, but we also need to know their surnames, because\nthey provide key information as to who their parents and families are. But a\nlist of names with no kind of order would be just a jumble that is hard to\nremember and use. Everything is much clearer and easier when surnames are\nlisted in alphabetical order, from A to Z.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The roof of Salzburg’s Cathedral<\/em>
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But\nthis of course leads to the names that people are born with being automatically\nassociated with the place that they will occupy in lists for the rest of their\nlives. Here in the Basque Country, if your surname is Alberdi, for instance, you\nwill always be near the beginning of the list, but if it is Zubiri you will be\nplaced consistently at the end. There is nothing inherently bad in this: it is\njust a way of ordering things and not a criterion for allocating resources. Or\nis it? Lists are sometimes used for distributing goods. When five individuals must\nbe selected from a list of 30, will the choices inevitably be made from the\nfirst few names on the list, leaving those at the end with fewer chances? Yes, I\u2019m\nafraid that this can indeed happen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As\nan enthusiastic member of the \u201cZ\u201d group, I have had more than one opportunity to\nwitness \u201ccrimes\u201d of this sort in the use of lists and, to make matters worse,\nto hear explanations based on dubious mathematical and statistical reasoning.\nIt never ceases to amaze me how supposedly mathematical logic can be used to\njustify choices that have no scientific basis whatsoever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Joaqu\u00edn Leguina<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I experienced a curious case of this kind some time ago. In the mid-1990s I was living on the outskirts of Madrid, drawn there by the scientific background of the area. It was a district where numerous housing developments had sprung up and there were a great many young people like ourselves who, unsurprisingly, had children aged four or five about to start school. We chose the state school system, trusting that the census and population register had been drawn up properly and the number of children expected to start school would therefore have been calculated correctly. The President of the Regional Community of Madrid at that time was Joaqu\u00edn Leguina<\/strong><\/a> of the Socialist Party, a man whose credentials as regards concern for high-quality state education were beyond reproach. But the public administration is a creature with a nature all its own, and when the school year began we found that the school was one starting-age classroom short.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nheadmaster resorted to what he referred to as a \u201cdemocratic\u201d method to decide\nwhich pupils would be allocated to the five classrooms available and which 25\nwould be left out. And obviously the coin dropped on the side of those at the\nend of the alphabet including, of course, the \u201cZ\u2019s\u201d. Matters were eventually\nresolved thanks to the skill of the headmaster, a member of a left-wing trade\nunion, who left no stone unturned in the regional system to get funding allocated\nfor express building work to set up another classroom in what was originally\npart of the school entrance hall. And he got it done more or less in time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But\nas the school year progressed and new classroom equipment was received, it\nalways came in multiples of five because, I assume, somewhere on a centralised\nlist someone had failed to enter the fact that this school now had six primary\nclassrooms and not five. So the school would receive five new whiteboards, five\ncomputers, five new shelving units, etc. Always in fives!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And\nthe headmaster, concerned that there should be no discrimination and fearing\nthat any other criterion could lead to unfairness, always allocated the\nequipment to the first five classrooms and left the sixth, where the \u201cZ\u2019s\u201d\nwere, with none. They always had to wait a few more weeks until complaints from\nparents and the school about the needs of this sixth classroom took effect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Feeling\nhalfway between fed up and curious, I went in one day to talk to the headmaster,\nwho told me that his firm determination to allocate resources in such a way as\nto ensure equal opportunities led him always to choose alphabetical order as his\nmethod for solving such problems. He saw this as the most random system that\ncould be imagined, because it was pure chance and the laws of nature that\ndetermined where between the \u201cA\u201d and the \u201cZ\u201d each newborn baby\u2019s surname (and\nplace on the list) would be; a factor inherited from its parents in an\nassociation established at the time of fertilisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obviously,\nI couldn\u2019t agree with his explanation, with its fragile probabilistic basis,\nthat the fairest solution was to allocate resources always to the same five\ngroups, however much it was random chance that determined which children were born\nto which parents. But there was nothing that could be said to convince him that\nit would be better, for instance, to start with a different group each time\nthere was a shortage so that the \u201cZ\u2019s\u201d did not always get the short end of the\nstick. He would not be budged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even\nso, we decided to part as friends, as we shared the heartfelt conviction that\neducation was the best passport for life, and that sometimes the system was\nmore sinned against than sinning in the absurd situations that arose in large-scale\nresource administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When\nmy daughter completed her primary schooling her school was still a benchmark in\nthe region, and indeed I hope it still is, in spite of the vicissitudes of the\nrecession.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having\nbeen born a \u201cZ\u201d, I have always wondered what life would be like for an \u201cA\u201d or\nan \u201cM\u201d, for instance, and what would happen if lists were sometimes ordered\nfrom the \u201cZ\u201d to the \u201cA\u201d rather than always the other way around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The original article was published in DEIA newspaper<\/strong>. \u00a0You can download the full article in this link<\/a><\/strong>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It never ceases to amaze me how supposedly mathematical logic can be used to justify choices that have no scientific basis whatsoever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6571,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[479,481,480],"class_list":["post-6568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-math-in-motion","tag-a","tag-alphabet","tag-z"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cmc.deusto.eus\/enzuazua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cmc.deusto.eus\/enzuazua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cmc.deusto.eus\/enzuazua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmc.deusto.eus\/enzuazua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmc.deusto.eus\/enzuazua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6568"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cmc.deusto.eus\/enzuazua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6580,"href":"https:\/\/cmc.deusto.eus\/enzuazua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6568\/revisions\/6580"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmc.deusto.eus\/enzuazua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cmc.deusto.eus\/enzuazua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmc.deusto.eus\/enzuazua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmc.deusto.eus\/enzuazua\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}