The Boundless Influence of Gheorghe

For such a seemingly inconsequential little filler/dipshittery purveyor, Gheorghe: The Blog has made an outsized impact on the larger world. As Clarence has repeatedly pointed out (via the comments section, naturally, so there's no link I can use to prove the notion), the editors of Grantland routinely scour G:TB for new ideas. And it's pretty obvious that we turned Sports Illustrated on to Elena Delle Donne's greatness. A whole anti-CERN cottage industry has sprung up around our coal mine canary efforts regarding the Large Hadron Collider.

After those and other influential campaigns, we've turned our efforts to a far more fundamental pursuit. We're changing math.

In partnership with Briton Rob Eastaway, our very own Zman has pioneered an entirely new way to think about computation. Friends, we give you zequals ().

Let's allow Eastaway to offer a description:

Zequals means you have to reduce any number to a single significant figure, followed by Zeroes (so the Z is for Zeroes, and also for the ZigZagness of the symbol).  For example 67 becomes 70, and the calculation 7 x 8 = 56 becomes 7 x 8 60.

Ultimately, zequals is extremely valuable when precision is less important than general directional sense. If we need to know roughly how many cans are in 18 cases of beer, 400 is good enough. If I need to figure out whether my kid's 98.8 degree temperature requires a trip to the doctor, 100 is probably a bit imprecise. But as Eastaway himself notes, "Many people develop the knack of estimating when they discover a real need for it: business people assessing the viability of a project, engineers looking at how long a job is going to take. In these examples, it’s the ballpark figure that’s important, not the number to its third decimal place."

Eastaway explains the concept in more detail in the video below. And while he doesn't credit Zman, we'll not take offense. We all know the truth, and that's good enough for us.