Drawing Ovals, the Dummy Method

Ellipse (L), one of many oval shapes (R)

In their daily headbanging sessions, the Antisocial Network research team often run into the same misconceptions repeated by multiple freelancers. You could search our blog for the tag "origin of oil and gas" to see how many people think a petroleum reservoir is a "pocket" or a "pool." Science is hard, after all, but apparently so is math. To be more specific, so is geometry. We've already seen at least one money-hungry freelancer who doesn't know the definition of an oval, and lo and behold, we just found another one! This one's eHow.com contributor Mark Morris, a first-timer here at the DotD awards. Mark's assignment? "How to Cut an Oval Shape From Wood Board." In spite of  his "fifteen years of professional carpentry experience," Mark blew this one...

Of course, had Morris actually done a couple seconds' research, he would have discovered that the shape called an oval, "when used to describe curves in geometry is not well-defined." Although his advice on using a band saw to cut the shape is... well, OK: not great, but OK... his instructions for laying out an oval are, at the very least, suspect; and we think they're just plain wrong.

Mark wants you to use a paper template to transfer the "oval" shape to the wood stock. His instructions for creating that template on a rectangular blank are

Cut a rectangle... from... paper...  Fold the paper in half the long way and the short way...  ...draw a curve, starting at the top of the center fold going the long way and ending on the outside edge on the fold going the short way.  Cut along the curved line through all four thicknesses of your paper.  Unfold the oval.  Refold and trim as needed... Create a second template if needed to get the correct shape.

Wow, now that is "precise"... not! If, however, you study Mark's instructions long enough, you'll note that the shape finally constructed approximates an ellipse. Apparently Morris has never seen the simple instructions for drawing an ellipse of known size, though if he had just looked for them he would have easily found them! Of course, that doesn't mean his instructions are for an "oval"...

The simple truth is that since the word "oval" doesn't correspond to a specific geometric shape, Mark should have said so instead of providing half-assed instructions for drawing a sloppy ellipse. If you want to cut a specific oval from wood stock, you'll need to trace it directly or use some form of projection to enlarge the shape (oddly, you'd think someone who "teaches stage craft" would know about this trick).

But no, Mark immediately ran into problems because 1) he took the (stupid) original question as gospel and 2) he didn't know the meaning -- or lack of meaning -- of "oval." That's why he's our Dumbass of the Day: for failing to do the research and for knowing jack about geometry.

copyright © 2016-2022 scmrak

MM - GEOMETRY