[FRIAM] The DeFrocked English Major Strikes Again

[Nicholas Thompson]

I am pretty sure this the stupidest question I have ever asked this forum,,
so I am at your mercy.

I am in one of those situations where language and mathematics are rubbing
together and driving crazy.

Let say that my patio is ten steps down from my back door.  I have two
cats,  Dee and Ess, and  Dee is dominant to Ess.  So, if I go out to let
them in, and I find  Ess on step -2   and  Dee on step -8,  I know I have
an unstable situation .   And I would  rate the degree of instability as a
positive 6.  How would I compare the two numbers mathematically to get  a
minus 6.

But let’s say that for conceptual reasons I want to conceive of the
situation as a degree of stability, with negative stability corresponding  to
instability.   Now, according  to my index, the situation is a minus 6.  How
would I compare the two numbers mathematically to get  a minus 6.

The situation I am trying to model here is the origin of the notion of
static stability in meteorology.  Static Stability has a lot to do with
differential lapse rates.  But lapse rates are minus numbers.  So a parcel
is unstable if it has a lower lapse rate than surrounding parcels, and the
greater the absolute value the difference between them, the greater the
instability.

I asked “George” (GPT) to help me with this, but he suggested I just take
absolute values and give them whatever sign I want, but somebody told me,
way back when, that taking absolute values was not kosher in mathematics.  (Why
else would the variance be the mean SQUARED deviation about  the mean?).
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