It's a lot. I mean, it says a lot that that is the best that can be extracted. I will read the transcript in a minute and see if I can find anything better.
But that quote! First, "inflection point." I'd like to see person-in-the-street interviews testing whether people even understand what it means to say we're at an "inflection point."
I don't think I've ever used the phrase "inflection point" on this blog. I mean aside that time I quoted somebody saying "We’re at this inflection point where we want people to know where their quinoa is coming from." And one other time in a quote (about YouTube having an "inflection point" at which it detects fake clicks). I use the word "inflection" only to refer to the way people speak, not to refer to a place — something like a crossroads or a fork in the road... you know, like the place where John Kasich stood to give his Democratic Party convention speech, in which he said "America is at a crossroads" (actually, it was the gravel path leading to his own pretty nice house).
Actually, "at a crossroads" sounds old-timey, and "at an inflection point" sounds new — like new jargon, meaningless new jargon. The literal meaning of "inflection" is bending. America is at the point where we are bending? But what is a bending "point"? I've heard of the breaking point. And one often speaks of bending as something that is done to avoid breaking. If we're bendable — and perhaps therefore not breakable — aren't we always bending? Is there some particular place for bending, and why is it now? Why are we at "an inflection point"? I have to infer that it means that we're at a point where if we stand rigid, we risk breaking.
The next phrase is "The constant chaos leaves us adrift." We're "adrift" and "afraid" and "alone." And therefore it is time to bend.
ADDED: "Inflection point" has a specific meaning in math, and that has led to its use in the business context, as Investopedia notes:
Based on mathematical charting models, the inflection point is where the direction of a curve changes in response to an event. To qualify, the shift must be noticeable or decisive and attributed to a particular cause. This principle can be applied to a variety of economic, business, and financial information, such as shifts in the gross domestic product (GDP) or changes in security prices, but it is not used in reference to normal market fluctuations that are not the result of an event.Politicians who believe that ordinary people hear "inflection point" as plain English are perhaps betraying an excessive alliance with business and finance.
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119 comments:
Sounds like she’s describing Portland and Seattle but no speaker at this DNC convention has ever mentioned their brothers in antifa and the mayors letting them kill burn loot and terrorize. Why say these words while eliding that subject? Her speechifying is as awkwardly jarring as her entirely inappropriate laughter is. No wonder she flamed out before the first primary vote. She’s awful. She can’t help him. Wow. What a disaster of a campaign.
Kamala and Joe are big on the second derivative in calculus, even though Joe cannot not discern concave up from concave down.
Inflection points are where the function changes concavity. Since concave up corresponds to a positive second derivative and concave down corresponds to a negative second derivative, then when the function changes from concave up to concave down (or vise versa) the second derivative must equal zero at that point.
We're at an infection point. They're trying to infect us with malaise. They loves their malaise.
Excuse me. The chaos I see, like the much proclaimed divisiveness, has originated and been sustained by democrats' not my president mantra. See also... Orderly Transfer of Power.
Who writes this stuff? Rod Serling died 45 years ago.
Trite and cliched but likely focus group tested and validated.
Nonsense speeches designed to appeal to emotion. Should work with the true believers, and even some of the undecideds. And chaos? Like we are seeing in the Blue cities of Portland and Chicago?
Strikes me as a bit of a John Kerry reporting for duty pose.
Shear flows are unstable at inflection points of the velocity profile.
That quote makes me think of which party supports the chaos. Is she trying to blame Trump for Democrat mayors and governors who have ordered their police to stand down in the face of riots and looting? Is it Trump’s fault that Democrat governors banned the use of Hydroxychloroquine, which we now know to be an effective treatment in early stages of the disease? Trump sent a USN hospital ship to New York City. Is it his fault that the mayor and governor — both prominent, hard core, Democrats — failed to use it? If we‘re at an inflection point, it’s the point where people stopped imagining Democrats as competent.
In math, the inflexion point of a curve is one of four things: a maximum value, a minimum value, a point at which the curve changes from increasing to decreasing or from decreasing to increasing.
So, this as as good as it gets,this is as bad as it gets, it's about to go from bad to good, or it's about to go from good to bad. But it's not good and getting better, and it's not bad and getting worse.
I think it's her political career that is at an inflexion point.
Kamala said..."We’re at an inflection point. The constant chaos leaves us adrift. The incompetence makes us feel afraid. The callousness makes us feel alone. It’s a lot."
And she is going to keep kneeling on your neck until you promise to vote for her.
If you went out and asked people about "inflection point", many would think you said "infection point" and then they'd be scared they'd get the 'rona from you.
The Dems are the chaos and the only thing to fear.
Inflection points are points where something turns from bending one way to bending the other. It's sort of a polynomial thing for cubics and above. Nobody seems to say it of exponential growth turning to exponential decay, where the exponential part is the important fact.
Inflection point is b-school talk. Popularly the concept is known as "tipping point," thanks to Malcolm Gladwell. But Kamala doesn't know anything about "popular," nor do her speechwriters.
"Inflection point"
She meant genuflection point. She thought they were about to play the national anthem.
Inflection point is b-school talk. Popularly the concept is known as "tipping point," thanks to Malcolm Gladwell. But Kamala doesn't know anything about "popular," nor do her speechwriters.
"Inflection point" was made famous by Andy Grove (critical CEO for Intel) in his book "Only the Paranoid Survive."
A book I'm nearly 100% sure that nobody involved in that speech has ever read. It is not presented as a simple tool, and Andy Grove was not a simple guy writing for simplistic people.
OTOH,he was a CIS White Male so I guess Kamala is allowed to culturally appropriate his stuff in any way she likes.
-XC
It looks like most of the states are not represented on the floor, and the ones that are the delegates are fixated on their screens, not the speaker.
There's something in Harris' voice that conveys instability, made more prominent by the ambient silence in response to her supposedly uplifting speech.
"Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." - MLK, Jr.
I think some of them are afraid we are at the inflection point and are headed for justice.
I’m just one of many who will make this point here, but just to amplify it to the degree it requires: the only chaos, callousness, and incompetence during the Trump era has been 100% caused by Democrats.
Yet they whine about it nonstop for the last 4 years and 39% of the country buys that steaming pile of bullshit.
It’s a lot, Kamala.
Dark. A dark vision. Alone, adrift, afraid.
Tried to watch. No can do. Unwatchable. Her voice is awful too.
Chaos
+80 days of mostly peaceful, protests. Resulting in ~30 people becoming mostly dead. Uncounted hundreds of people mostly assaulted and injured because they were mostly... shut up.
All condoned by Democrat Party policies, and part of Democrat Party political platform, going forward.
Pay no attention to the chaos that motivated a retired law prof in mostly safe, Madison Wisconsin, buying and training to use a 100% safe and benign hand gun.
Mostly
So the question has to be asked: Who created the chaos? Who has worked harder over the past 4 years to create chaos in this country than Democrats?
It's not a difficult question or answer. And I suspect any Americans who hear her comment will come to the same conclusion as they think back to Russia! Russia! Russia!, or Kavanaugh!, or Impeach!, or Lockdown!, as they watch the streets of Portland, Seattle, San Francisco. LA, Chicago, Baltimore, New York, et.al.
It's almost as if they don't understand how much damaged they've done. Or...maybe it's exactly the amount of damage they wanted.
The arc of the moral universe is long but has a justice-oriented inflection point.
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...
"Sounds like she’s describing Portland and Seattle but no speaker at this DNC convention has ever mentioned their brothers in antifa and the mayors letting them kill burn loot and terrorize. Why say these words while eliding that subject?"
She's mentioning it, though obliquely, with the word "chaos" which has been in pretty much every speech so far. It's the DNC's dog whistle that means "Trump's fault." So it's a deflection point.
I guess she means to suggest that we are at a historical point at which public support for the progressive agenda changes from negative to positive. But yeah, not an effective misuse of a math term, party of science speechwriters.
LOL Meade. We Scots Irish Americans are still at their “no bended knee “ part of the battle to save our country. And it’s time for every American Patriot to come up on this hill and fight.
Went down to the inflection point,
Fell down on my knees
Asked the Lord above, "Save poor 'Mala if you please"
You can run, you can run, tell my friend Willie Brown
You can run, you can run, tell my friend Willie Brown
That I got the inflection blues this mornin', Lord, babe, I'm sinkin' down
So we not only have Joe Biden playing the part of Grandpa Simpson, we also have Kamala Harris playing Professor Frink: "I'm afraid you have a severe inflection in your HOYVIN-GLAVIN!"
God but these Dems live in a bleak bleak joyless world.
"The constant chaos leaves us adrift. The incompetence makes us feel afraid. The callousness makes us feel alone. It’s a lot."
I fully agree. But from her (or any Democrat), it's not an assertion so much as a technique. The left is enthusiastically creating the situation she is lamenting and since they feel it is to their advantage to complain about it, they will do nothing to alleviate it. (Similarly to how the Democrats, having determined that poor people are more likely to vote Democrat, deliberately pursue policies to create more poor people.)
"We’re at an inflection point. The constant chaos leaves us adrift. The incompetence makes us feel afraid. The callousness makes us feel alone. It’s a lot."
I was told they weren’t talking about the riots.
The phrase "inflection point" comes from calculus, and the context is a function, or interpreted graphically, a special kind of line. An inflection point -- and a function can have multiple inflection points -- is a point where the 'curve' flips from positive to negative, or negative to positive. And there are a thousand different ways to say the same thing.
Except that the concept of "inflection point" has the nice property that once you understand it you can spot the inflection points just by looking at a line, assuming that you have established an coordinate plane, that is you have made an arbitrary choice, since inflections points are defined with respect to a coordinate plane.
Anyway, I understand what an inflection point is and have used the phrase all of my life, and the phrase might pop out of my mouth all its own without my thinking about it, but there is always the danger when using such words that one is not being understood.
If she's feeling truly alone and afraid, she can always call Ol Willie.
Seconding the point made by RHardin. In calculus, there are three situations in which a curve can have a slope of zero. A U-shaped curve has a slope of zero at the bottom (the minimum); an upside-down U has a slope of zero at the top (the maximum). The third situation (described by RHardin) is where a curve "changes shape": For example a curve that never turns down might slope up and then turn flat and then slope up again. There can be zero slope on the flat part, and that is called an "inflection point".
If this is what Harris's speechwriters intended, it is a subtle and interesting argument: that the US was trending sharply up until Trump ruined everything and the US was stagnating; but now we are poised to turn sharply up again as Biden/Harris sets things right. Presumably to take this imagery one step further: if Trump continues in office the curve will be an upside-down U, and what could have been an inflection point will turn out to be a maximum.
Read the quote in the title before seeing the source and rest of the post.
My immediate thought was that yes, this is exactly the problem we are having in California. Massive infrastructure issues, narrow leadership that only conceives of urban space issues, rampant corruption, billions of dollars in high speed rail to go places people aren't even encouraged to go, highly privileged politicians out of touch with the deep concerns of people in financial and emotional chaos.
The irony is that scrolling down it is a quote from one of our California senators who exemplifies the corrupt system of gaining and expanding power in California and reflects the reality of one party rule in our state.
She's exactly right about the situation. Comically wrong about the source and solution of this situation.
She's right. It's the point where they curve changes direction. We were curving upward with the best economy of our lives and the greatest improvement in minority employment and wealth ever. The Dems were openly wishing for a change to that so that Trump would be weakened. They did their best to turn that curve down, and they did pretty well under the guise of safety, which is always the biggest threat to liberty and success.
Ever notice that advice from "experts" is always the same? Whether from doctors, lawyers, financial consultants, or any other kind. Their advice always comes down to: "be careful, don't take any risks, diversify, get your rest", etc, etc. The stuff that assures you will never accomplish much more than mediocrity. The problem is the world is full of competition, challenges and predators, and often the worst thing you can do is just wait for the all clear sign. Basic survival is fight or flight, not stand there and wait to see what happens.
Bend over, America.
I went out on a limb and predicted that the MSM would praise the greatness of her speech. I was correct. Even if she had read the telephone book, the reviews would have been the same. They were probably written a week ago with some fill in the blank items.
I haven't watched or read the speech.
Did she say anything about getting the Ku Klux Klan out of the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement?
Did Senator Harris at any point address the indisputable (pardon me) elephant in the room:
Joe Biden has dementia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflection_point: "where the curvature changes sign". That is, on one side it's concave downward and on the other it's concave upward, or the reverse.
I leave it to others whether that's an effective metaphor here.
Kamala is just referring to when Willie Brown inflected her in exchange for political jobs.
That "For What It's Worth" monstrosity the other night was a perfect display of what is wrong with the Dem party. It looked like a video designed by committee. Everybody had to get a little something in. We need Steven Stills and the song for the Boomers, we have to have a POC, and let's not leave out the LGBTs, but we also can't forget to have a flag in there somewhere so some regular Americans feel welcome. No vision, no new ideas, no balls, no plan, No Thanks.
I wonder if that’s how someone feels when they’re sent to prison for a crime they didn’t commit or for committing a victimless crime. As they sit there preparing themselves for confinement, being attacked or raped, and for the relentless passage of their limited time on Earth. I wonder if they feel any of these feelings Kamala Harris describes. I wonder if she thought of any of her victims as she accepted the adulation of her party?
"The constant chaos leaves us adrift. . . ." So surrender to Big Brother! He will protect you! Big Brother loves you! Love Big Brother!
It's not only the words, it's the delivery. Perhaps the lack of a crowd is partly to blame. But boy was she less than rousing.
I think the Harris Pence debates might be the cure for insomnia the world has been searching for.
I wonder who in the DNC thought she would be a good candidate ?
She had big CA money behind her at the start but flamed out. Here she is again, doing no better.
"The constant chaos leaves us adrift. The incompetence makes us feel afraid. The callousness makes us feel alone."
Bragging about those fucking Democratic polices - how do they work?
I think she looked better before the operation.
Perhaps the average person hears this as"infection" point which they understand is what the Trump administration has done to this country.
COVID. Infection point.
I always think the VP candidate should do all they can so as not to outshine the Presidential Candidate. Brava Harris for lowering the bar for Biden.
I thought the take-away quote was “I know a predator when I see one”. For the past week Scott Adams has been emphasizing Kamala is a predator and that’s why she was chosen. The democrats seem much more skilled in lying.
Thanks for the recap, Althouse.
But, I was a little disappointed that you couldn’t find a DJT ad for this post, unlike other posts today. [BW, it won’t be as impactful to have Meade link to DJT stuff in the comments.]. If not an RNC ad, at least, add some DJT commentary to the post.
Thx.
I was told Socialism would be a boot on my face, pressing down, forever. Now I learn it is a pointed-toed pump worn by Senator Harris, and a comfy bedroom slipper worn by poor old Joe Biden, who has dementia. Still, the pressing down forever is uncomfortable.
Democrat party hiveminders do feel adrift unless their party is in control.
Even if that party is a wrecking ball or grifters for personal wealth.
Kamala wants to dismantle our Immigration and Customs dept.
I sure hope the GOP is smart enough to roll that tape over and over.
When I was a lawyer, I looked for potential clients that were reaching an inflection point (new financing for expansion, IPO, major acquisition, etc.) because they were likely to need experienced legal help to get them to the next level.
Actually, "at a crossroads" sounds old-timey...
A crossroads was where people traditionally went to strike a deal with Satan. Maybe she's just letting it be known she's open to offers.
Chaos, incompetence, and callousness are the hallmarks of the Democrat campaign this year. Burning cities to try to create an atmosphere of chaos that you can blame on Trump? It’s not only callous, it’s incompetent.
There has also been plenty of callousness displayed by Trump supporters that is pretty hard to stomach too.
"I wonder who in the DNC thought she would be a good candidate ?”
Their Silicon Valley masters told them they wanted her to be president when Biden’s health flameout happens, probably sooner than later.
I have not followed the Democrat inflection/convention, but has anyone brought up how they are going to make those Democrat cities/hell holes livable again?
Constant chaos.
Rham Emanual, Obama Chief of Staff, then one term Mayor of Chicago. "Never let chaos go to waste."
This is a Democrat feature, not bug.
Are you old enough to Remember how Pelosi passed a $3 TRILLION bill, for short term Covid 19 response?
Who has motivation to keep chaos going?
John Kass has an interesting take about the Democrats' convention.
sneak Preview of president Kamala
Yeah, she's predictably awful, particularly with her backstory. However, when Trump is on the stage with Pence, the minorities, people under 40, the undecideds are going to see two elderly White Men, one with over-the-top dynamics, and the other so bland he looks like a ghost. Trump is making a major mistake in this political atmosphere not changing vice presidents and recruiting a competent, aggressive woman. A conservative woman of color with a solid record of accomplishments could be the proverbial nail in the coffin of the Biden campaign. Pence seems to be a good man, but he won't appeal to the persuadable centrist.
Blacks will vote for Trump at nearly double the number of 2016.
Latinos will vote for Trump at roughly 1/3rd higher percentages.
How many Woke Karens are there?
Because by my math there would have to be about 4 million of them.
Otherwise, the strategy of promising respite from the riots cannot work.
Heck of a city you have here. Be a shame if anything happened to it. -- Democratics 2020
Buy more ammo. -- Free citizens across America
"Inflection point" refers to that moment when the prospect of vomiting changes from if to where.
“God but these Dems live in a bleak bleak joyless world.”
An American Carnage, eh? What did Trump run on in 2016? Fear. He tapped into fear of migrants. He tapped into any phobia and ism that plagued rightists that he could take advantage of. And he did. If Trump filled you people with joy, then I must ask what is wrong with you?
Add another constant in the a Trump Presidency, corruption.
Manafort, Bannon, to mention only two. Trump has so far been protected as President from the full force of the law regarding his own corruption. When he is no longer president that will not be the case. Can’t wait.
“So the question has to be asked: Who created the chaos? Who has worked harder over the past 4 years to create chaos in this country than Democrats?”
But if we are dealing with chaos, isn’t detecting inflection points fairly difficult? What may look like an inflection point may well just be noise. We are constantly hearing about inflection points in regards to Climate “Science” that ultimately turn out to be just chaos or noise.
I'll bet Obama gets some twisted satisfaction from Kamala's drone strike.
Three-quarters of the Democrat voters don't know what the word 'inflection' even means.
Side note: just heard a Hillary >H soundbite on the news. She was talking about the need to vote because even though she won by three million votes, she still lost the election.
Is this the smartest, most qualified person to ever run for president? Is she so fucking stupid (and are her voters) that she cannot fathom the simplicity of the electoral college? I am so sick of Democrats pounding lie after lie (fine people) with no shame.
If I were a sentient Dem voter I would wash my hands of the entire party and start thinking of a new way...leftists are lunatics.
"But boy was she less than rousing."
What a difference an 'A' and an 'R' can make...just ask Willie Brown : )
This probably means Kamala Harris studied calculus at some point in her life, quite possibly as a freshman at Howard University or maybe it was in high school. And when you think about what people are likely to retain from a class in calculus, then this is quite likely. What makes it easy to remember is that you can look at a line and spot the inflection points easily, and that means people practice it and that means they remember it.
I don't think she's taking this phrase from the stock market context. The stock market meaning is just another way of saying 'dramatic change.' And it is not the same meaning as in calculus.
She is using the phrase metaphorically, which is what we do with words all the time, and it's appropriate. If she wins, I fear that the United States will change direction and go to a bad place.
The Obama mold of Democrat is constantly saying that we're all terribly divided right now, but then go on to reinforce that divide by saying that the divide is all the fault of those nasty right-wingers. If you're truly opposed to "division," and believe that in and of itself it's a bad thing, you need to tell your supporters that the opposition is not evil, not "deplorable," not "bitter[ly] clinging to their guns and their religion," and that they should NOT panic about the current state of the world, because the overwhelmingly vast majority of Americans are good and decent people just trying to get on with their lives.
The Obama mold of Democrat is constantly saying that we're all terribly divided right now, but then go on to reinforce that divide by saying that the divide is all the fault of those nasty right-wingers. If you're truly opposed to "division," and believe that in and of itself it's a bad thing, you need to tell your supporters that the opposition is not evil, not "deplorable," not "bitter[ly] clinging to their guns and their religion," and that they should NOT panic about the current state of the world, because the overwhelmingly vast majority of Americans are good and decent people just trying to get on with their lives.
Was Joe physically at the convention last night? It looked like he was but he and Harris never got very close to each other and it could have been CGI.
If he was, well he speak live tonight?
Will he start holding pressers?
John Henry
A politician being hyperbolic, never seed that before.
Ray Kurzweil got rich from deplorables by being hyperbolic. The cucks want to live forever.
Bob Boyd says "Bend over America" which reminded me that there is an old military expression BOHICA for Bend Over Here It Comes Again.
Perhaps Kamala could use that but it would expand to "Bend Over Here It Comes America"
John Henry
And then thinking about Howard University, that's a segregated college! It's students are overwhelmingly black. The point of going there is that you will be surrounded by black people. Howard University is about race.
So what does this mean? Well partly it means Kamala Harris really is black. Forget about her ethnic background, she perceives herself as being black.
Second, it means identity politics is second nature to Kamala Harris. She thinks in racial terms. She probably judges people based on their race.
Or maybe I'm being unfair. I don't know.
When a rational person looks around for chaos, where to do you find it right now? I see it almost exclusively in areas completely under the control of Democrats.
What is it about this moment in time that makes Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama say we are in some existential crisis? What is it about Trump's policies that makes them say that?
"The constant chaos leaves us adrift."
You mean the riots done by the left's foot soldiers, aided and abetted by Democrat mayors and Democrat governors?
"The incompetence makes us feel afraid."
You mean like the "medical experts" at the CDC who owner out a coronavirus test that was infected with coronavirus?
You mean like the Northeastern Democrat Governors who sent WuhanFlu+ people to live and work in nursing homes, leading to lots of unnecessary deaths?
No, that wasn't incompetence, that was evil
"The callousness makes us feel alone."
I guess we could fit the "NE Dem Govs killing old people" here.
Along w/ all the Democrats desperate to destroy the economy, to try to make Trump lose in Nov
And the Dems who are cutting back police activity, leading to a lot more people becoming crime victims?
Yes, VP Candidate Harris, those things are a big problem. And all great reasons to vote for Trump in November
We aren't in a big huge war right now. Hurricanes and Tornados have been covered.
So what have been the things that have caused "constant chaos"?
- Russia "collusion" --- A Democrat creation. Started because Obama and Biden were following Hillary's lead on a smear.
- Impeachment -- A Democrat creation. Trying to get in front of the story about the corrupt Bidens...so Jim Clybourn could endorse him
- Looting and Riots -- A Democrat creation
So then we have COVID.
A lot of the speakers at the "convention" are talking from classrooms, saying they want them open. As if the teachers unions aren't holding the classrooms hostage for Democrats.
My Governor is still deciding what business can be open and which cannot.
And NO GOVERNOR followed Biden's lead and declared a statewide outside mask wearing mandate. NONE
Would we be more together about COVID if the Democrats hadn't stirred us up about all the other things?
I have to say, I am dog tired of Democrats stirring up emotions and then telling us the only way to soothe our souls is to vote Dem.
Did you all see Lyft and Uber are going to stop operating in CA for a bit because of their awful anti-gig-workers law the Democrats passed on behalf of unions?
You want that? Who here wants that kind of leadership nationally?
Will one of the usual lefty commentators here please name a single, prominent centrist/moderate voice in the Democrat Party?
The only one I can think of is Mitt Romney.
oh! The Kavanaugh chaos. Created by the Democrats.
"The constant chaos leaves us adrift."
Indeed, years of collusion hoax, followed by impeachment fiasco, followed by WuFlu panic, followed by riots leave us adrift.
"The incompetence makes us feel afraid."
Indeed, prog governors stuffing WuFlu patients into nursing homes, prog mayors failing to stop riots and destruction, progs generally trying to tank the economy, make us feel afraid, including blacks now buying guns and ammo.
"The callousness makes us feel alone."
Indeed, we see callous teacher unions depriving kids of education and forcing families to feel alone, callous colleges shutting down and isolating students to feel alone in their old bedrooms, callous prog governors imposing economic devastation on their states making millions of unemployed feel alone.
I agree with Harris. Let's put an end to toxic progressivism.
We're not at any inflection point. We are submerged in a morass of ignorance, gasbaggery and imprecise thinking.
It adds up to squalor, Ms. Harris, but thanks for playing.
I was assured there would be no math on this blog.
We're not at any inflection point. We are submerged in a morass of ignorance, gasbaggery and imprecise thinking.
It adds up to squalor, Ms. Harris, but thanks for playing.
You press on the gas pedal, and your car accelerates. Then you press on the brakes, and you decelerate. That point where your foot is in the air between the pedals is an inflection point. You can still be on the road to ruin, but now you're slowing down.
It's not a business term. It's a math term from calculus, It's a point where the second derivative goes through zero. Business uses that owing to its being math.
We've all been staring an exponential graphs since March. Don't we all have inflection points on the mind?
Did she say anything about the walls closing in?
If you are looking at a time series, like some variable versus time, you never can know if you are at an inflection point until after the inflection point has occurred and you have data after it’s occurrence. So Harris Is not at an inflection point, but perhaps after an inflection point.
Inga - what corruption?
Discussing Biden's corruption = Trump is corrupt.
Is that how you hiveminders define corruption?
I'm getting a Michael Jackson vibe from Kamala's new face.
Must be the chin.
About the hoax Jonathan Truley has this to say about one person: For some of us, the allegation against Manafort is hardly surprising but we were hoping for new evidence on his conduct. I have been a long critic of Manafort and criticized his selection by the campaign. I both supported his federal prosecution and opposed any presidential pardon or clemency. I also viewed his sentence as far too light. As I previously wrote, Manafort has been long known to be a reckless and corrupting influence in Washington. It does not surprise me at all if Russian intelligence saw him as an easy mark or worse. The role of Kilimnik as a possible Russian asset has been discussed for years, though the House Intelligence Committee seemed to largely ignore his role.
So in other words, the rioting will stop and COVID will go away if we simply elected Democrats in November.
Well, I'd rather have the rioting and COVID if those are the options.
Inflection points are where the function changes concavity. Since concave up corresponds to a positive second derivative and concave down corresponds to a negative second derivative, then when the function changes from concave up to concave down (or vise versa) the second derivative must equal zero at that point.
There are a lot of wrong mathematical statements in this thread. This one is the closest to being correct. The first sentence here is true. The second sentence is the usual case, and it's how the concept is taught to Calculus students, but the second derivative does not have to be 0 at an inflection point. Consider the function y=-x^2 for x<0 and y=x^2 otherwise. This function is continuous and differentiable everywhere, but the second derivative is not continuous at 0. Yet 0 still an inflection point.
“I have to say, I am dog tired of Democrats stirring up emotions and then telling us the only way to soothe our souls is to vote Dem.”
“Only I can fix it.”
Donald Trump after playing on the fears of rightist America to get elected president. He used your fears to gain power. You look for that tactic from Democrats while ignoring what your own leadership has done. Are you blind and deaf?
"Inflections are increasing expodentially!", said Joe Biden's husband.
Kamala is right. I do feel overwhelmed, alone and cast adrift. I honestly can't take much more of the chaos. It's emotionally and mentally debilitating. But the thing is, I genuinely do not understand how anyone who did not start out with an utterly irrational hatred of Trump can lay blame for this chaos on his doorstep.
I despised Trump through the Republican primaries and had little use for the fruitcakes who supported him. He said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and his whackjob supporters wouldn't bat an eye and I figured he was probably right. Unfortunately, he won the primary and I was forced to decide whether I hated Trump or Hillary more. No contest. I hated Hillary more. I was genuinely surprised and pleased Hillary lost, although not particularly enthusiastic that Trump won. Fifteen minutes later, however, the left lost its collective mind and have now been relentlessly batshit crazy 24/7 for 4 years.
It took Herculean effort to make Trump a sympathetic figure, but the left pulled it off. The Dems/media overreacted to every single word that came out of his mouth and no matter how trivial the complaint, impeachment was their answer. When the endless array of wildly implausible conspiracy theories didn't pan out, Covid and Antifa/BLM riots turned up, and, man, the last 6 months have been a joy to live through. The left has been on Defcon 1 and dialed up to 11 all year and sweet baby Jesus, these people are certifiable. Trump, to my everlasting surprise, has stood his ground throughout and continues to fight for things I actually think are worth fighting for. The left has responded by becoming ever more terrifyingly unhinged. It's hard to get worked up over Trump being an asshole when the left is so fucking insane.
Today, if the media announced Trump had shot someone on Fifth Avenue, I wouldn't even look up from my knitting, assuming that a) such an tale was lavishly embroidered, if not fabricated out of whole cloth and b) to the degree that it was true, the person in question likely deserved to be shot. I'm not thrilled the world has come to this, but I don't hold Trump responsible.
I hated Trump when I voted for him, but after four years of this crap, I would swim through lava, crawl over broken glass and fight my way through plague-ridden throngs to vote for this man in November. As awful as Trump can be, the left right now is exponentially worse.
but has anyone brought up how they are going to make those Democrat cities/hell holes livable again?
Lots and lots and lots of Federal Money.
I'm familiar with the term, but I've taken calculus.
“ Blogger bagoh20 said...
That "For What It's Worth" monstrosity the other night was a perfect display of what is wrong with the Dem party. It looked like a video designed by committee.“
I still can’t get over it. Was he supposed to be a gay vampire? Who green-lit that? Hideous.
“ Blogger Birkel said...
Blacks will vote for Trump at nearly double the number of 2016.
Latinos will vote for Trump at roughly 1/3rd higher percentages.”
Don’t forget all the Democrats in conservative areas of the midwest who don’t like the extreme leftward lurch of their party.
And, of course, many Republicans who couldn’t force themselves to vote for a ten-untested Trump will gladly pull the lever for him now because he has a bona fide conservative track record.
I think it will be Trump in a landslide.
"Inflection points are where the function changes concavity. Since concave up corresponds to a positive second derivative and concave down corresponds to a negative second derivative, then when the function changes from concave up to concave down (or vise versa) the second derivative must equal zero at that point."
There are a lot of wrong mathematical statements in this thread. This one is the closest to being correct. The first sentence here is true. The second sentence is the usual case, and it's how the concept is taught to Calculus students, but the second derivative does not have to be 0 at an inflection point. Consider the function y=-x^2 for x<0 and y=x^2 otherwise. This function is continuous and differentiable everywhere, but the second derivative is not continuous at 0. Yet 0 still an inflection point.
The problem with your explanation, Wikitorix, is that it only makes sense if you already know calculus. Concavity, derivative, second derivative, function, continuous, and differentiable, these are all concepts that if anything are even harder to understand than inflection point. So even if you are being more accurate in some sense, it still doesn't mean anything to most people.
But you did help me to understand something important that I had missed. That is Harris is misusing the idea of the inflection point!
What is the common mistake that people make when they are learning about inflection points?
Well they confuse a hilltop or a valley, speaking metaphorically, with an inflection point. And that's exactly what Harris did.
In her mind she's picturing things getting worse and worse under Trump and then when she gets in power things turn around and get better and better. But that's not an inflection point!
A real inflection point would be if for instance things were getting worse under Trump but lately the rate at which things were getting worse had slowed down, but then if Harris comes to power, the rate at which things are getting worse will speed up again. Now that would be a real inflection point.
(And yes, I know that we can come up with functions where Harris's use of the term would make sense, but let's be honest, she's not thinking of any of those unusual functions.)
In math, the inflexion point of a curve is one of four things: a maximum value, a minimum value, a point at which the curve changes from increasing to decreasing or from decreasing to increasing.
No it's not.
In calculus, there are three situations in which a curve can have a slope of zero. A U-shaped curve has a slope of zero at the bottom (the minimum); an upside-down U has a slope of zero at the top (the maximum).
Those aren't inflection points.
For both those incorrect statements, imagine a sine curve. The inflection points are where sin(x) crosses the y-axis (sin(x)=0)**, not where the slope is zero, so not the local max or min, it's where the curvature is changing sign (as in +/-, not 'sine'), so the curvature is zero as the curvature goes from positive to negative. ** Because sin''(x) = -sin(x)
She's right. It's the point where they curve changes direction.
It's actually the point where the curve *doesn't* change direction, because the curvature is zero; it's a straight line at that point.
I find it intriguing that our hostess was a professor for many years but did not know that inflection point had a mathematical meaning. Professors should be required to take a class outside their area of expertise every semester until they have taken every class offered at the university. It would surely be beneficial to them, and humbling.
What a dozen or more people on this thread have said already: "Inflection point" is where a curve moves from concave to convex, or the reverse. It is something that anyone who has taken calculus and passed it -- or, frankly, taken calculus and not passed it -- understands or at least understood at one time. It has no connection to business in particular, except insofar as business uses calculus.
What Kamala Harris meant by it, frankly, I've no idea.
If Fernandistan at 3:02 is going to quote me (my comment at 8:37 am) and then criticize me, I wish he would read more carefully my comment. I didn't say that a maximum or a minimum were "inflection points". In fact, I said, "The third situation (described by RHardin) is where a curve "changes shape": For example a curve that never turns down might slope up and then turn flat and then slope up again. There can be zero slope on the flat part, and that is called an "inflection point"."
Fernandistan may very well be an accomplished mathematician, but his reading comprehension is sub-par.
I approve of the comments using the terms convex and concave to describe an inflection point, but I was trying in my 8:37 comment to describe the graph without using technical terms.
This is the nominee of a party whose hirelings have been burning and looting and blinding killing for months now. And she says Donald Trump is callous.
Democrati delendi sunt.
All this discussion of calculus reminds me that calculus determined my profession for me. Until the 12th grade, I had a serious interest in becoming an astronomer -- had a 4-inch reflecting telescope, read all sorts of books about planets and stars and galaxies. Then I took calculus. About halfway through the year I realized I didn't remotely understand this stuff - I could do the calculations, but I had no idea what I was calculating. I also understood that calculus was like basic arithmetic compared to the real math that astonomers had to deal with. So I changed my career goal, and eventually became a lawyer, a profession for which I was much better suited. And that reminds me:
A physician, an engineer and a lawyer were arguing about whose profession was the oldest.
The surgeon said, "Remember how God removed a rib from Adam to create Eve? Obviously, medicine is the oldest profession."
The engineer replied, "But before that, God created the heavens and the earth from chaos, in less than a week. You have to admit that was a remarkable feat of engineering, and that makes engineering an older profession than medicine."
Then the lawyer said, "Who do you think created the chaos?"
Lawyers -- the oldest profession. Sounds right to me. What do you think @Althouse?
Harris's recent plastic surgery left her with a permanent Chris Wallace smirk. Not a good look on a man or a woman.
At least she didn't say saddle point, because that adds a whole 'nother dimension.
"from concave to convex," it could handle each sex, but oh what a bastard to clean.
A song about a piece of machinery designed by a man named McClean.
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