Cimrman's Corrective Constants

All right, let us come back to the original topic:Cimrman's corrective constants.

Almost everybody, how ever even remotely touched studying of any technicalbranch, has at least once, deliberately or not, used Cimrman's constants. Pischvojc's constants, as are Cimrman's constants unfortunately oftenmisnamed, form an unseparable part of any technical field.Let us show an example of use of Cimrman's corrective constants:

Task: Student is to find the value of an integralof an explicitely definad function f.Let us refer to the result of his effort as A,let B be the correct result found in a textbook or elsewhere.

Solution: Student performs the calculation and if his result is equal to theconventionally correct one (if A = B ), then everything is all right and there is no need to useCimrman's corrective constants.If A < > B, different situation occurs. In this case we correct the result as follows:

C = k * A

k....Cimrman's corrective constant
C...Result after correction
A...Student's result
B...Correct result

C = B

Any (nonzero) result(!), even an apparently wrong one, can be now,thanks to the Cimrman's corrective constant, be adjusted to get the correct one!

when measuring physical quantities, using Cimrman's corrective constantsyields much better precision of the resulting value.

Pischvojc-Cimrman's tables, published in 1897 should be availablein any reasonably equipped technical library. Basically, they contain the values of the following function:

y = ( 2 * ( x + 1 ) - 2 ) * 0.5

k = C / A

k = B / A

Thanks to the above mentioned formula, and also to the rapid developmentof pocket calculators, the use of Pischvojc-Cimrman'sextended tables is now obsolete.Scientific calculators today have mostly the functions for Cimrman's corrective constants already built in.It must be noted that the manufacturers, much to their credit,respect the historical facts and refuse to use the name Pischvojc.Let us show the calculation on this kind of a machine:

1. Switch on the calculator.
2. Press CE (Cimrman Enable) to switch to the Cimrman's correctiveconstants mode.
3. Press CM (Cimrman's Mathemathical buffer) to clear the Cimrman's buffer.
4. Evaluate the formula above to find the value of the Cimrman's constant.
5. Press M+ to store it into memory. It can be recalled any timeby pressing RM.

Unfortunately, Cimrman has not completed any further research on thistopic. Besides the already mentioned (multiplicative) correctiveconstant, he introduces also the additive constant as:C = A + kA formula to calculate the value of k is still to be found.Despite of that, the theory of corrective constants formsone of the focal points of Cimrman's mathematical achievements.Today, this theory is is an inseparable part of any technicalscience.

iVosH LUkAcoViC - XLUKACOV@HWLAB.FELK.CVUT.CZ
Translation: Jan Kybic - XKYBIC@CSLAB.FELK.CVUT.CZ

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Cimrman's Corrective Operator Pabla

A few remarks by his pupils from the basic school give usa likely reason for this overlook. Albert Jednosutr hasremembered until a late age, how Cimrman alleged thata number does not change when multiplied by zero. As Albert went altogethersix times through the third form where the multiplication was tought,he was fairly sure about the teacher's mistake and dared to point it out.(From some, due to the course of time fairly damaged Cimrman's noteswe can assume he arrived that false conclusion from the knownequality 0! = 1!.) Master seemingly ignored Albert's objectionbut within a half a year he finished a significant generalizationof his theory: instead of a corrective constant, he introduceda corrective OPERATOR.Unfortunately, Cimrman's publisher's math knowledge was very superficial and he had not realized that in the case ofthe incorrect result being nonzero, the corrective operator becomesequivalent to a multiplication by a corrective constantand that the new theory therefore did not endanger the commercialsuccess of the Pischvojc-Cimrman's tables.To be safe, Pischvojc had not published Cimrman's work at all.(His excuse was that the typesetter refused the manuscript for itsillegibility. For Master's handwriting, this explanation sounded very likely.)

Strangely enough, the theory was not forgotten andspread widely by word of mouth. I myself rememberthat during my studies at the beginning of 60's was thementioned operator among my colleagues very popular. However,we could not anticipate its author (at that time, nobodyknew about Cimrman anyway).We called it Vitoul-Stejskal's operator "Pabla".My colleague even used it with an English calmness during an oral examination. The examinator did not want to admithe had never seen the Pabla operator and accepted the solution.

Jan Kucera - KUC@FCE.VUTBR.CZ
Translation: Jan Kybic - kybic@earn.cvut.cz

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Psychology

Cimrman started his psychological research after a tragic death of hisfriend, doc. Kratinoha (doc. is a scientific title of Universityproffesors), who sacrified his life for science. It was perhapshis short lasting marriage what made doc. Kratinoha to leave hiscomfortable job of an University teacher and start to occupy himself with the problem of a female logic.These days he kept in touch with Cimrman, who supported him in thisresearch. Doc. Kratinoha started to build his theory litteraly 'on a green meadow'. At the very beginning he had to create a set of tools to base his research on. "The basic entity", writes Kratinohain his notes, "is a female statement. It is however not a statementin the traditional sense."Doc. Kratinoha extended the generally known theory of logic. Classicalyit recognizes true and false statements. Kratinoha, for his theoryof female logic, introduces additionally also a female statement.During his research work, Kratinoha often felt depressed."There is one thing I fear.", he writes in his diary."That the thing we study does not in fact exist."After several years of hard work, he seemed to be arriving to a conclusion.Cimrman, who saw him often that time, comments:"He started to be in a better and better mood. He never laughed before.Now he could laugh for hours. He said, his research will be soon finished."Cimrman could not know how cruel truth is hidden in the last remark.A few days after, Kratinoha calls Cimrman."He told me he finally discovered the principle of a female logic,"wrote Cimrman in his notes. "It was very hard to understand him, as he laughedall the time. He never laughed so strongly before." When Cimraman arrived to his friend's appartement, the tragedy wasover. The mystery of his death while he destroyed all the furnitureand that lift him smiling even after his death was soon explained bya medical examination. He literally beated himself to death with laughter.He brought the principle of the female logic with him into a grave.He became the first man to know but he paid the highest price.

Cimrman later tried to reconstruct his experiments but did not get far."In this field, it all seems to be a bit fuzzy, uncertain and ... well.",he wrote and it was this sentence that gave the name to today'sfast progressing field.

The popularity of FUZZY LOGIC is caused mainly by the fact thatit is based on Cimrman-Kratinoha's research of the female logic.

However, what has not survived for our and future generations, isCimrman's FEMALE-HUMAN PHRASE DICTIONARY.

Despite of not continuing with the research of female logic, Cimramankept himself occupied with psychology for some time.During his frequent argument with his landlady, he developped so-called strategy of hard behaviour.Once, the landlady could not control herself any longer and exploded:"Aaah, sir, TV !" - her speech abilities limited by anger, what shement was a threat to take away the TV set from Cimrman's room. This inspired Master to name the new strategy.He wrote: "She simply behaved ahsirteeveely." Later the name wasmisspelled and today we would call it an assertive behaviour.The strategy unfortunatelly have not lasted in its orriginal form andhas been grossly simplified. For example the methods houngry dog,holding tick and difficult insect gradually degenerated to themethod of damaged phonograph cylinder and now it is known as a method of a scratched LP.

By the way, Cimrman also defined the fourth degree of anger. It happenedwhen doc. Kratinoha was still alive. One Sunday in August, doc. Kratinohashowed Cimrman, partly as a joke, his definition of the three degreesof anger. He called a randomly chosen telephone number.
"Boubelik," said the voice.
"Good morning," said Kratinoha. "Can I speak to Mr. Novotny?"
"It must be a mistake," was the answer. "There is no Mr. Novotny here."
Kratinoha hanged up the phone and lift his finger."This was the first degree. Now I show you the second." He called the same number and asked again for Mr. Novotny.
"I have already told you there is no Novotny living here.",answered the man in an angry voice.
Doc. Kratinoha waited a while and then called the same number andwanted again to speak to Mr. Novotny.
"You damned bloody fool," shouted the voice, "How many times I told you, you have a damned bloody wrong number.You call me for..."
Kratinoha hanged the phone and smiled. "That was the third degree.""Interesting," replied Cimrman, "but I know also a fourth degree.""Really?," answered Kratinoha, "Will you show it to me one day?""I can do it now," did not hesitate Cimrman and dialed the knownnumber.
"Boubelik", said the man angrily. "Good morning", said Cimrman in hist nicest voice."My name is Novotny. Is there any message for me?"

iVosH LUkAcoViC - XLUKACOV@HWLAB.FELK.CVUT.CZ
Translation: Jan Kybic - XKYBIC@CSLAB.FELK.CVUT.CZ

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Research

(in Czech "Pravda a zvesti o Cimrmanovi")by Josef Taurek Sazovsky. In this book he tried to collect and sortthe various reports from the eye-witnesses who had the chance tobe in a Master's proximity.

I dare to take a part in the discussion and to correct the ideas presented by our colleague, Mr. Urban, about the study on superconductivityCimrman was believed to perform during his North Pole expedition.My colleague's assumption was most likely caused by a brief remark"CONDUCT", found in Cimrman's notes from the expedition. However,this remark should have been interpreted with regard to otherknown facts. The size of the letters could suggest a great discovery,however the truth is less romantic. The note should have reminded Cimrman it was his turn again to conduct a regular evening session aboutcard games they used to hold every day to overcome the boredom duringblizzards when they had to stay in an iglu for several days. Cimrman himself expected to improve his almost fatal financial situationthis way by teaching his colleagues some of the Czech card games he was good at and expected to win easily, as his colleagues were only beginners, but it had proved to be a false assumption.Cimrman naturally became a bit frustrated as he had already tried almost allthe games he knew and this explains the size of the letters.

The game they played most was marias. Later it transpired that the reason why Cimrman's geniality failed to earn him the deserved victory was his Korean partner who often peeped into Cimrman's hand.

Fig 1. A 178 years old Heu-Chu-Mi from Korea still fit and enjoying a full health.

As soon as Cimrman discovered this miserable behaviour, he counterattackedwith a specially trained blackbird that transmitted him the informationabout his opponents cards by means of a sign language.This is in a perfect accordance with a known fact that shortly after returningfrom the North Pole, Cimrman published his "Marias from the blackbird'sperspective", first in Korean, later, because of a great interest alsoin Czech. Unfortunatelly, all the copies are probably lost but judgingfrom how quickly it was sold out, it must have contained a valuableinformation about Korean strategy that could be presumably applied also inother games.

Now I would like to say a few words about the following topic:Cimrman and computers. It is not yet widely known that

Cimrman invented electrical computer during his stay in Russia.

The Russians still, paying tribute to the great inventor, usethe word shczot, as he used to say, having some temporary troubleswith his teeth, instead of the original version- sczot. (Shczot is a device, capable of basic arithmetic operations,based on shifting little balls along several paralel wires.)

Cimrman installed the electrical computer in Ukraine in his soda factory.Looking at its the economical reports one can find that the results wereat first distorted by big errors that suddenly disappeared.Comparing this fact and some of the sketches in Cimrman's notebookwe can conclude that Cimrman, in order to eliminate this errors and help the book-keeper, constructed an electrified version of shczot.He connected wires holding the sliding balls to the positive terminal of a 120V battery. The second terminal he attached to the book-keeper'swrist. Now when he touched the shczot without fully concentrating himself,he got an electric shock to remind him of his duties and to help him avoiderrors.Due to a dry weather he had to gradually increase the voltage up to 360V.And when once the rain fell and Cimrman lost his book-keeper,not much work was needed to convert the electrified shczot andthe resulting invention - called originally "Cimrman's Diathermal Heater" -which under the name of "electrical chair" is still used, for example in the U.S.A.

The original, human name and purpose unfortunately graduallydisappeared. It is also possible, given Cimrman's thoughtlessness,that this invention was stolen from him, as were many others.

The following invention was an automatic shczot that already remotely resembles a computer.The drawings were originaly evaluated by dr. Hedvabny as a shaking deviceto filter out weed from corn but he never provided a satisfactoryexplanation, why the distances between wires were relatively big and what was the reason for freely moving balls.After having studied the sketch and taking into account Cimrman's famousstatement "All the results are equally wrong, only some can be worse",he wrote down when traveling in a horse carriage from Ukraine to Tibet andhopelessly trying to make some calculations using a shczot, we are totallyconvinced, that the invention, originally marked as "manual shaker with alever", should be rather marked as "Manual automatic ball counter".This counter worked using a Monte Carlo method!The complex system of levers, dr. Hedvabny thought served to adjust theangle of the shaker in a side wind, actually adjusted the valuesof arguments to get the result with a higher probability then usinga random distribution.

So far and high reaching was Cimrman's geniality!

I unfortunately cannot publish a drawing here to document our conclusions.

Radek Splichal - INSPL@FCE.VUTBR.CZ
Translation: Jan Kybic - KYBIC@EARN.CVUT.CZ

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Corrections

ear colleagues!

In my last article I mentioned Cimrman's invention of superconductivityof non-metallic materials, with regard to Master's journey to the SouthPole. This invention is confirmed many times in Master's co-workers' diaries.As an example let us quote from a diary of a fifteen year oldIvan Alexandrovic Assimovov: "... and he used to steadilyturn this cheeky noisy thing, from which wires lead into the iceberg andback. (Master's older invention, known as linear three-phasedynamo.) With all that noise one even could not touch iceas he immediately got a kick and HE (Cimerman) only laughed and went on faster. This man may once perhaps invent also something to eat." That was just to remind you of the importance of that invention.

Now let us return to Mr. Splichal's work.The book mentioned, "Marias from the blackbird's perspective",does not deal with a Korean strategy, but exclusively with using blackbirdsand other birdsin card games and the adventages it brings.This technique later brought Cimrman a big financial profit but sometimesalso an injury suffered from his opponents.

All that was preserved from the book is an introductionby prof. Nejedly, epilogue and the list of contents.Some items from the list of contents:

The basic training of young birds
Fast data transmission through ether
The correct card holding under water

and others

From the selected parts we see that Master really created a complexhandbook usable anywhere and any time.I only feel it is a shame he has not published similar guides about strategies for other games.

I have done what I felt was due to inform the public correctly.Further results will be eventually published later.

With cimrmanologic greeting"There is nothing you could not find an explanation for in Master's work."

Urban Jakub - URBAN@FSID.CVUT.CZ
Translation: Jan Kybic - KYBIC@EARN.CVUT.CZ

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