Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2011 February 14

= February 14 =

Grand Mosque Tirana
is the Grand Mosque Tirana the same as Et'hem Bey Mosque? b/c i saw some wonderful night picture of the former, but it doesnt lool anything like the latter.(Lihaas (talk) 03:38, 14 February 2011 (UTC)).
 * Perhaps the pictures were of Baitul Awwal Mosque the only other significant mosque in Tirana I found mention of. All references to a grand mosque seem to refer to the one on the central square, i.e. the Et'hem Bey, but Awwal means first. Otherwise you could link to the pictures, someone may be able to identify it.  meltBanana  05:28, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Egypt's dissolvement and suspension
What revolutions have resulted in not just the dissolvement of parliament and suspension of the constitution but entire legal system to be replaced by the law being set forth as a list of known variables and states subject to clarification through new variables and states from court rulings or reconsideration of the legislature so as to illuminate judgments being based on on  psychological illusion versus fact and the law? --Inning (talk) 04:15, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Still none, since you asked last month. 75.41.110.200 (talk) 04:28, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * What publications have you read which say this so that I can avoid them in my continuing search? --Inning (talk) 05:27, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Wow, I even ran out of breath in my head reading that sentence. What makes you think publications will go out of their way to tell us that something so specific doesn't exist? Vimescarrot (talk) 07:56, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * The question is what publications 75 read in the last month which did not provide an answer to the original question. Suppose the original question was "How many nude girls are their running around the Vatican?" To his answer "Still none, since you asked last month." comes the question "What publications have you read which say this so that I can avoid them in my continuing search?" "Saying this" simply interpreted means only "What publications have you read in the last month that have led you to this conclusion?" --Inning (talk) 10:35, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Dog Fancy and Disney Princess Magazine didn't cover the story, and neither did Nintendo Power. Does that answer your question? Aaronite (talk) 17:42, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I have no idea what you are trying to say, but my guess is that it has something to do with your polychotomous key law. I think there is a fair chance that, unless you yourself have written publications about it, noone else has either in the past month. --Saddhiyama (talk) 10:49, 14 February 2011 (UTC)


 * You are happily charging down the argument from ignorance rabbit hole. Look not for avoiding things that don't confirm your assumptions. Look instead for things that confirm them. Do you have any reason to believe that your assertions have happened? I see absolutely no evidence for thinking that this has occurred. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:10, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Answer. We are not aware of any. Have you tried Google Scholar? Itsmejudith (talk) 17:14, 14 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Anyway, "dissolvement" is barely even a word... AnonMoos (talk) 00:59, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd go for dissolution myself. Alansplodge (talk) 12:57, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * The OED agrees that it's not a word. Parliaments are often dissolved, or adjourned, or prorogued. The noun forms of these verbs are dissolution, adjournment and prorogation, respectively. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 18:46, 15 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Inning, to answer your question, Hunter S. Thompson ran for sheriff of Aspen, Colorado in 1970 but lost. Had he won The Battle of Aspen, then I'm pretty sure that psychological illusion would have illuminated his judgment. --M @ r ē ino 18:54, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Why do I get the feeling that somewhere Professor Kingsfield is turning over in his grave? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 08:01, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Demand curves (and supply curves)
Today in AP Macroeconomics, we covered supply and demand, including supply and demand curves. When asked to draw a demand curve from a given set of data, I accidentally switched the axis (I put quantity on the Y and price on the X). When my teacher pointed out that price always goes on the Y axis, I was puzzled as to why. My confusion arose because to me, price is more of an independent variable compared to demand (when the price increases, demand goes down, and when the price drops the demand goes up), and in mathematical graphing you always put the independent variable on the X axis. As class went on, I began to see how neither one is really more independent or dependent to the other, but to me that would mean it didn't matter which one went on which axis. I did ask my teacher why price always goes on the Y axis, but he could offer no better explanation that "That's just the way it's done." Checking the Wikipedia article on demand curves, I see it doesn't offer much better of an explanation, saying only "according to convention, the demand curve is drawn with price on the vertical axis and quantity on the horizontal axis." So, that leaves me still wondering: Why is price always drawn on the vertical axis? Ks0stm (T•C•G) 21:41, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * "By convention" is essentially it, as far as I know. And by convention, I mean Alfred Marshall's convention. Before him, they were drawn both ways round. After him, well, virtually always with price on the Y-axis. I assume it was useful to him to have it that way round, but equally he might have just flipped a coin, I don't know. - Jarry1250 [Who? Discuss.] 22:48, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Conventions often don't have reasons behind them. It's just useful for everyone to do something the same way and one way happens to stick. --Tango (talk) 23:19, 14 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I think the reasoning behind this is that Price is generally considered to be the variable that sellers manipulate, while Quantity is either a stable given or an outcome influenced by demand. In other words, one is assumed to have a given quantity of an item (or rather, a steady stream of the item coming from producers) and a given level of demand: one then manipulates the price in order to increase demand.  excessive demand may spur increases in the stream of items produced, but producer actions such as flooding the market or artificially restricting availability are generally considered to be unpleasant business practices, and economists tend to ignore them despite their prevalence in the real world.  The economist is (all things considered) an oddly moral beast.  -- Ludwigs 2  19:23, 15 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I have found a source! (Not for the morality of economists of which I am a student, alas.) Bottom of the page. Marshall, for reasons we can only guess at, broken with tradition. And everyone else followed him. Someone should add that to the article... - Jarry1250 [Who? Discuss.] 19:33, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Wikipe tan wants YOU to add that to the article! -- Ludwigs 2  02:06, 16 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't think the X independent Y dependent convention existed when Marshall first drew his graphs. Our article on dependent and independent variables doesn't go into the history of the concept, but our article on regression analysis (related idea) dates its formalisation to the work of Karl Pearson, later than Marshall. Itsmejudith (talk) 11:29, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

The choice is arbitrary in that neither price nor quantity is the "independent" variable. Rather, the two are mutually determined. From the individual's perspective, price is independent in that the individual responds to the going market price by altering quantity demanded (if the individual is a consumer) or quantity supplied (if the individual is a producer). From the market's perspective, quantity is independent in that price responds to the difference between quantity demanded and quantity supplied. In short, the traditional demand and supply graphs are an attempt to describe a dynamic relationship in static terms. Hence the confusion. Wikiant (talk) 12:06, 16 February 2011 (UTC)