text:
Talk:Offside (association football)

Backwards logic
The formulation "A player is in an offside position if ... There are two or more opposing players between him and the opposing goal line" gets the rule exactly backwards. What would be the best way to invert this clause so that the entire paragraph can still be understood? — Preceding unsigned comment added by K.a.foth (talk • contribs) 18:21, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

- "A player is in an ONSIDE position if there are two or more opposing players between him and the opposing goal line."

Neutral on offside rule being misunderstood
Whether or not the offside rule is misunderstood is irrelevant to this article. While it might be true that the author of "soccer for dummies" thinks it's the most misunderstood/confusing rule, simply citing that source doesn't actually make offside the most misunderstood rule. In the interest of wikipedia's neutrality point of view policy, it's probably best just to avoid anything in the article about offside's subjective rank on an arbitrary scale of misunderstanding.

At first I had changed the wording of a wiki-editor so to avoid a subjective opinion being portrayed as a fact by clearly writing that it was claimed to be the most misunderstood rule. When wiki-editor reverted the wording back I thought more about it, and I figure that the article is probably better with that claim omitted all together. ~anon

 * AFACT, Soccer for Dummies is a perfectly valid reliable source. I also fail to see how it is in any way "un neutral". Two kinds of pork (talk) 04:20, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

 * The offside rule probably IS the least understood rule. It's probably the reason we have an article on it. HiLo48 (talk) 06:07, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

I'd also like to point out, that the reference isn't even really necessary. Offside is the most misunderstood laws of the game. There are countless sources stating the confusion involved. Do they state it is the most confusing? There are quite a few that do, from lower quality sources such as soccer blogs then to better sources like club sites. But then we have SFD and small quiet articles in sites like Yahoo, which should be good enough for us to say so. I don't think we need a peer reviewed source to make this statement.Two kinds of pork (talk) 10:41, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

As is, the statement is fine ("one of the most misunderstood") in that it is correct, although I'm not sure how much that adds (it's probably an example of weasel words). How do you measure what is the "most misunderstood", however? No obvious reasoning behind the claim. What about other rules? Backpass? Indirect free kicks? The new rule about how you can't score when the other team is expecting to get the ball back after kicking it out for an injury? They are pretty misunderstood, whatever that means. Macosal (talk) 13:27, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

'''The statement Law 11 is "one of the most misunderstood" is surely true but it offers about as much information as the statement Law 11 "is one of the lowest(or highest) numbered laws" or even "one of the most understood". They are all tautologies in the sense that any member of a group is still a member of the group no matter how you sort(i.e. reorder) it.

Note: A possibly more up to date revision/edit from the same source, "Football For Dummies Cheat Sheet (UK Edition)" (http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/explaining-the-offside-law-law-11.html) doesn't call the rule misunderstood, instead it says it's "the most argued-over law wherever in the world the game of football is played, even though it’s pretty simple."
 * This might be a good compromise too, any argument would just be making it more true! :-p

~anon 30jul14

 * Why do we have an article about the offside rule? It's because it's largely incomprehensible to a big chunk of the world's population. Even it's existence is incomprehensible to me. This incompehensibility is one of the more notable aspects of the rule. The article should explain that. (Now, if an enthusiastic fan comes back and says I'm wrong in saying "largely incomprehensible", you've missed my point. I will be happy to explain.) HiLo48 (talk) 21:08, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

 * Largely incomprehensible is ok(ish) (although no one involved in the game has any issues with the rule, so it literally is "able to be comprehended"), but "to a big chunk of the world's population" needs a source or else is a case of weasel words. There is certainly some infamy surrounding this rule in non-footballing circles which should be reflected in the article but I think the current terminology used in the article is an example of weasel words. Macosal (talk) 00:54, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Infamy, I like it, presumably we have articles for each law.  I see no problem with stating that this law is the most whatever, because the sources support it.  It is helpful to inform the reader that Law 11 has more impact on the game than say Law 5 and the color of the refs kit.Two kinds of pork (talk) 07:52, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

@HiLo48 I'm not an enthusiastic fan, but you're wrong. Incomprehensibility is a relation not an intrinsic property. If you wrote "I don't really understand the rules very well and the little aussie kids that I try to teach often have trouble understanding as well." Then you'd be bang on. The fact is there are many people around the world that don't understand many things. The understandability of a concept or idea depends on the abilities and resources of the people trying to understand it and is NOT an intrinsic quality of the concept itself. Consider whether trigonometry is "largely incomprehensible", even though many people might have difficulty understanding basic trig concepts, we also teach the subject to many children that seem to get the jest of the basic concepts very quickly. An even better example, consider Greek, a perfectly comprehensible language to millions of people, but it is also used to describe anything that is largely incomprehensible to a person: "It's all Greek to me!".

Wikipedia articles are a resource that people can use to help them learn to understand new concepts, ideas, rules and much information of all kinds. A well written article can be a valuable resource to one who is eager to understand and learn new things, but sometimes a writer's intentions (conscious or subconscious) or opinions may result in work that is more about the propagation of an opinion or political philosophy rather than altruistic attempt to help the reader understand most easily.

@HiLo48 I've noticed that you seem to be a big fanboy of Two kinds of pork and have showered him with praise, but in this instance I don't think he understands the context and intended message of the source he referenced. It is from the For dummies series of books, I don't have a copy, but I read some of their online content and from other editions and the common tone of the series in general I think it's fair to say that what the author was saying in the book could be paraphrased as: "You may think yourself a dummy(you did pick a book called soccer for dummies) but don't feel bad if you don't yet understand the offside rule. Many people have difficulty understanding it, but I'll make it simple to understand in this chapter." I think it's a fair assumption that it was not the author's intention to convey a message along the lines of "A examination was done of soccer officials worldwide and the questions most often answered incorrectly were with regard to offsides." But someone could easily (and incorrectly) infer this from the statement that "[offside is] one of the most misunderstood laws of the game."

Two kinds of pork indicated on his talk page that he dislikes soccer and thinks little of it's fans. So I figure that if one's view is "stupid sport has stupid rules", then one's belief that soccer is stupid would be supported by emphasizing that one of it's rules is misunderstood (and therefor stupid). I think that people should be free to hold whatever opinions they want, but I think that the Wikipedia readers are better served when articles are free of prejudicial undertones.

Wikipedia has a neutral point of view policy. This means that if there are conflicting viewpoint the standard is to include ALL that are relevant. However, for this SPECIFIC example I think it would be largely unnecessary and would not benefit the reader to read either "Offside is misunderstood" or "Offside is easy to understand" and including both is just a waste of space. Including neither would maintain a neutral point of view and, in my opinion, is the best solution.

@HiLo48 I think I understand your point if it's "This rule is stupid and lot's of people don't get it, man!". If that's the case I actually agree with you. My point is that this article should be an objective description of the rule and written to help people better understand it, rather than try to persuade them to think the rule is stupid or not. ~anon 31jul14

 * WP:TLDR HiLo48 (talk) 21:03, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

 * That's a shame, there were a number of relevant points to this discussion brought up. Pretty conclusively explained why the phrase shouldn't really be used here. Not constructive to respond dismissively. To sum some key points (as I read it): the offside rule should not be called "incomprehensible" as this is a subjective term. Soccer for Dummies was obviously not trying to make a well sourced or definitive claim that offside was statistically the most misunderstood rule (whatever that means). To call the rule easy/hard to understand is expressing a POV which doesn't need to be here (aside: it's not much harder to find a source claiming offside is simple such as this). Macosal (talk) 23:52, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I would also urge you to read WP:TLDR. Macosal (talk) 00:08, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

 * Agree with Macosal on both points. Indeed, how about reading WP:TLDR, HiLo48? It's a good essay. Here, I'll quote it: "A common mis-citation of this essay is to ignore the reasoned and actually quite clear arguments and requests for response presented by an unnecessarily wordy editor with a flippant "TL;DR" in an attempt to discredit and refuse to address their strongly-presented ideas and/or their criticism of one's own position. This is a four-fold fallacy: ad hominem, appeal to ridicule, thought-terminating cliché, and simple failure to actually engage in the debate because one is supposedly too pressed for time to bother, the inverted version of proof by verbosity." Bishonen | talk 00:15, 1 August 2014 (UTC).

We don't have an article on the handling the ball rule. We do have one on offside. Why? HiLo48 (talk) 01:21, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
 * @HiLo48 I believe the reason should be self evident; because nobody has created one yet. You can create one yourself or request that one be created. This probably isn't the right place to discuss such since ball handling rules would be in a separate and distinct wiki page.
 * Who wrote that? HiLo48 (talk) 08:25, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

 * 99, Please dont attribute statements to me that I never made. I said anyone with a smidgen of common sense prefers real football.  Soccer has its place, mostly for children, and who could really dislike children, but I digress.  Since you have made it apparent you will continue to edit war, I'm done with this article.  Try and keep your eyes off of my contributions.  Should you start following me around to articles I frequent, I'll ask an admin to order you to stay away, as you've already indicated you were doing whatever the heck you've been doing for your amusement and not for the purposes of editing articles.Two kinds of pork (talk) 08:17, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

 * You already asked an admin and got zilch. Please don't make meaningless threats on talkpages, it's not collaborative. Bishonen | talk 16:55, 1 August 2014 (UTC).

 * Also, if you are referring to the rule against using your hands to play the ball, it seems that is covered in the wiki article Fouls and misconduct (association_football)

~anon:31jul14

 * Please don't reframe my posts, and do learn to sign your posts properly with ~ HiLo48 (talk) 05:43, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

 * Agree with Anon (no article on handball because none has been created). Also seems like rules have been turned into articles based on the stand-alone rules which can be seen at Template:Association football laws. Not quite sure how that's relevant in any case. Macosal (talk) 14:31, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

 * I'm sorry. My attempt at a rhetorical question obviously went way over the heads of some here. Clearly the reason we have an article on the offside rule is because it's confusing, and controversial. The reason we don't have an article on handling the ball is that it's not confusing. We don't need an article on handball. We do need one on offside, and the article should explain why. Even those who believe it's simple must acknowledge that many don't believe it's simple. HiLo48 (talk) 21:59, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

 * No need to belittle other editors. Are you saying that every rule with a page is confusing and controversial? Should throw-in be labelled as one of the most misunderstood rules of football simply because there is an article on it? Is offside (rugby) confusing and controversial (there is a page on it, after all)? Should it therefore be labelled one of the most controversial rules in rugby? Clearly the mere existence of an article is insufficient to label something as confusing and controversial... (In fact, for the record, the handball rule has led to its fair share of controversy). As I said earlier, I'm not against referring to the conception by many that the rule is complicated, but the current use of weasel words/inappropriate sourcing is not the way to do that. Macosal (talk) 14:11, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

June 2015 cleanup
I've removed the following: "Critically, an offside offense occurs if a player is an offside position when the ball is played to him/her, their position when they receive the ball is irrelevant."

Appears to be a WP:SYNTH possible situation in which the laws apply; in any case, no source to show where this situation is addressed specifically. I've replaced it with an interpretation of the current laws, by adding "at the moment the ball touches or is played by the player's team" to an earlier part of the explanation. "A player who does not possess the ball or is not the most recent player on his team to play the ball is in an offside position if he is in the opposing team's half of the field and is also "nearer to his opponents' goal line than both the ball and the second-last opponent." (ref http://www.fifa.com/aboutfifa/footballdevelopment/technicalsupport/refereeing/laws-of-the-game/law/newsid=1290867.html )"

The source is a dead link; I don't see anything about "does not possess the ball or is not the most recent player on his team to play the ball" in Law 11 in the 2014/2015 Laws of the Game; indeed, Law 11 seems to contradict "most recent player on his team" by saying that any player on his team can be the most recent player with the ball when an offside happens. I've removed that phrase and sourced the rest to the 2014/2015 rules. Anyone have a different interpretation? "The International Football Association Board has clarified in the 2009–2010 Laws of the Game that a player temporarily off the field of play is considered to be on the boundary line at the point that he crossed over it. (ref Laws of the Game 2009/2010 (page 130), FIFA, )"

Neither book-numbered page 130 (PDF page 128) nor PDF page 128 (book-numbered 130) of this PDF deal with offside; one deals with the corner arc, and the other begins the organizational rules of the IFAB. I can't find this phrasing in either those 2009/2010 Laws or the 2014/2015 Laws. Page 109 of the 2014/2015 Laws says: "Any defending player leaving the field of play for any reason without the referee’s permission shall be considered to be on his own goal line or touch line for the purposes of offside until the next stoppage in play." Per WP:PROVEIT, I've removed it until someone can show a citation specific enough to be verifiable.

I've added citations to the current FIFA Laws for each statement I could identify, and I've also added citation needed span tags to a few other things that I couldn't identify. Editors should remember that the rule for including a claim in a Wikipedia article isn't whether the editor and his friends have always thought a certain way; it's whether each interpretation and opinion about the rule can be sourced back to specific verifiable reliable sources for that interpretation or synthesis. --Closeapple (talk) 07:04, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

pictures of previous offside positions
article states offside rules were different in history. can someone upload them explained in a picture/diagram? or where can we find their pictures, if you know share the link --Sir artur (talk) 08:46, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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2017 Cleanup and Reference source updates
Over the course of a couple of days, I have tried to add and update as many reference sources as I could (mostly, updating references to the Laws of the Game to the 2017-18 edition). I also modified several sections of the article in an attempt to make them match more closely with the provisions in the Laws and removed some wording that was not supported by anything in the Laws. User:GroveWanderer (talk) 03:30, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Whose goal is it anyway?
I sit on the fringe of soccer, with an interest in the game, but not an obsession. I admit to having given up on the offside rule ages ago, leaving it to the experts. But today I thought I'd have another go at understanding it.

I hit my first hurdle with "...in the opponents' half of the pitch, and closer to the opponents' goal line". Now, in life in general, a goal is something I aim to get to. It seems that's not the case is soccer. Apparently I aim at my opponents' goal. Weird. Maybe that needs to be explained to readers of soccer articles at some point. How did the language get so screwed up in soccer? HiLo48 (talk) 23:08, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

 * You try to defend your goal, like in a war you defend your flag or capital from the enemies. :) It's the same in other sports, isn't it? Ice hockey, handball, bandy, volleyball, basketball, tennis ... you have your own half, from which you move the ball to the other team's half where you try to score it.  At least in Swedish you talk about scoring "own goals" in all similar sports. Fomalhaut76 (talk) 18:53, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

What is the purpose of the rule?
What is the purpose of the rule? How would the game be harmed if this rule was not part of the game? 70.169.159.48 (talk) 07:57, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
 * It's a shame this has received no answer. The article doesn't explain it. HiLo48 (talk) 23:06, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Good point. I added a short paragraph on motivation. Maybe someone can finde more sources and extend it. Sebastian (talk) 09:53, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
 * A usual misunderstanding is that there would be more offensive play and more goals if the offside rule were to be eliminated. Probably it would not be so.  Without an offside rule, each team would be forced to let a few defenders stay behind and not take part in an attack.  Thanks to the offside rule, there is an incentive for the teams to involve more players in the attack.  (This I have read somewhere, and it totally makes sense.)  Fomalhaut76 (talk) 18:57, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

open goal
without ANY defendant the goal is just an open box with a net. its "no sport" to make the ball enter the goal without any person to block that ball. so its "off" when there is no defendant between the attacking player to bal to goal line. is that fair game ?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.149.83.125 (talk) 20:04, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Empty Page?
How can ever this page's description be Empty!? Yes, and if you don't think so, check the page (I guess, there was an edit war in the page history). It's never OK to do this to the page, and guess what? Useless references. Yes, that's what the evil one have done to the page! I hope someone can fix it. تنعيم ٩ (talk) 08:32, 14 June 2024 (UTC) Tanim_9

title: Talk:Offside (association football)


text:
SMS Zrínyi

SMS Zrínyi ("His Majesty's ship Zrínyi" ) was a Radetzky-class battleship semi-dreadnought battleship (Schlachtschiff) of the Austro-Hungarian Navy (K.u.K. Kriegsmarine), named for the Zrinski, a Croatian-Hungarian noble family (Zrínyi). Zrínyi and her sisters, SMS Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand and SMS Radetzky (1909), were the last pre-dreadnoughts built for the Austro-Hungarian Navy.

During World War I, Zrínyi saw action in the Adriatic Sea. She served with the Second Division of the Austro-Hungarian Navy's battleships and shelled Senigallia as part of the bombardment of the key seaport of Ancona, Italy, during May 1915. However, Allied control of the Strait of Otranto meant that the Austro-Hungarian Navy was effectively contained in the Adriatic. Nonetheless, the presence of the Zrínyi and other battleships tied down a substantial force of Allied ships.

With the war going against the Austrians by the end of 1918, Zrínyi was prepared for transfer to the new State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. On 10 November 1918, just one day before the end of the war, navy officers sailed the battleship out of Pola (Pula) and surrendered to a squadron of American submarine chasers. Following the handover to the United States Navy, she was briefly designated USS Zrínyi. In the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, the transfer was not recognized; instead, Zrínyi was given to Italy and broken up for scrap.

Design and construction
Zrínyi was built at the Stabilimento Tecnico Triestino dockyard in Trieste, the same place where her sister ships were built earlier. She was laid down on 15 November 1908 and launched from the slipway on 12 April 1910. The teak used on Zrínyi's deck was the only material Austria-Hungary had to purchase abroad to build the ship. The ship was completed by 15 July 1911, and on 22 November 1911 she was commissioned into the fleet. She was the last ship of the class to be completed and had a crew of 880 to 890 officers and men.

Zrínyi was 138.8 m (455 ft 4 in) long, and had a beam of 24.6 m (80 ft 8 in) and a draft of 8.1 m (26 ft 9 in). She displaced 14508 LT normally, and up to 15845 LT with a full combat load. She was powered by two-shaft four-cylinder vertical triple expansion engines rated at 19,800 indicated horsepower. The ship had a top speed of 20.5 kn. Zrínyi was the first warship in the Austro-Hungarian Navy to use fuel oil to supplement her 12 Yarrow-type coal-fired boilers. She had a maximum range of 4000 nmi at a cruising speed of 10 kn.

The ship's primary armament consisted of four 30.5 cm (12 in) 45-caliber guns in two twin gun turrets. This was augmented by a heavy secondary battery of eight 24 cm (9.4 in) guns in four wing turrets. The tertiary battery consisted of twenty 10 cm L/50 guns in casemated single mounts, four 47 mm (1.85 in) L/44 and one 47 mm L/33 quick-firing guns. Furthermore, the ship's boats were equipped with two 66 mm L/18 landing guns for operations ashore. After 1916–17 refits four Škoda 7 cm K16 anti-aircraft guns were installed. Three 45 cm (17.7 in) torpedo tubes were also carried, one on each broadside and one in the stern.

Service history
The ship was assigned to the Austro-Hungarian Fleet's 1st Battle Squadron after her 1911 commissioning. In 1912, Zrínyi and her two sister ships conducted two training cruises into the eastern Mediterranean Sea. On the second cruise into the Aegean Sea, conducted from November to December, Zrínyi and her sister ships were accompanied by the cruiser SMS Admiral Spaun and a pair of destroyers. After returning to Pola, the entire fleet mobilized for possible hostilities, as tensions flared in the Balkans.

In 1913, Zrínyi participated in an international naval demonstration in the Ionian Sea to protest the Balkan Wars. Ships from other navies included in the demonstration were the British pre-dreadnought HMS King Edward VII, the Italian pre-dreadnought ITALIAN BATTLESHIP Ammiraglio di Saint Bon, the French armored cruiser FRENCH CRUISER Edgar Quinet, and the German light cruiser SMS Breslau. The most important action of the combined flotilla, which was under the command of British Admiral Cecil Burney, was to blockade the Montenegrin coast. The goal of the blockade was to prevent Serbian reinforcements from supporting the siege at Scutari, where Montenegro had besieged a combined force of Albanians and Ottomans. Pressured by the international blockade, Serbia withdrew its army from Scutari, which was subsequently occupied by a joint Allied ground force.

During that year, the first of four new dreadnoughts, SMS Viribus Unitis, that made up the Tegetthoff-class battleship—the only dreadnoughts built for the Austro-Hungarian Navy—came into active service. With the commissioning of these dreadnoughts, Zrínyi and her sisters were moved from the 1st Division to the 2nd Division of the 1st Battle Squadron.

World War I
At the time of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria on 28 June 1914, the battleships in the Austro-Hungarian Navy consisted of the Radetzky class, the Tegetthoff class (which still had one ship, SMS Szent István, under construction), the Erzherzog Karl-class battleship and finally, the older Habsburg-class battleship. Along with the remainder of the Austro-Hungarian Navy, Zrínyi was mobilized in late July 1914 to support the flight of SMS Goeben and SMS Breslau. The two German ships broke out of Messina, which was surrounded by the British navy and reached Turkey. The flotilla had advanced as far south as Brindisi in southeastern Italy when news of the successful breakout reached Vienna. The Austro-Hungarian ships were then recalled before seeing action. On 23 May 1915, between two and four hours after news of the Italian declaration of war reached the main Austro-Hungarian naval base at Pola, Zrínyi and the rest of the fleet departed to bombard the Italian and Montenegrin coast. Their focus was on the important naval base at Ancona, and later the coast of Montenegro. The bombardment of Montenegro was part of the larger Austro-Hungarian campaign against the Kingdoms of Montenegro and Serbia, which were members of the Entente, during the first half of 1915. The attack on Ancona was an immense success, and the ships were unopposed during the operation. The bombardment of the province and the surrounding area resulted in the destruction of an Italian steamer in the port of Ancona itself, and an Italian destroyer, ITALIAN DESTROYER Turbine, was severely damaged further south. On the shore, the infrastructure of the port of Ancona, as well as the surrounding towns, were severely damaged. The railroad yard in Ancona, as well as the port facilities in the town, were damaged or destroyed. The local shore batteries were also suppressed. During the bombardment, Zrínyi also helped to destroy a train, a railway station, and a bridge at Senigallia. Additional targets that were damaged or destroyed included wharves, warehouses, oil tanks, radio stations, and the local barracks. Sixty-three Italians, both civilians and military personnel, were killed in the bombardment. By the time Italian ships from Taranto and Brindisi arrived on the scene, the Austro-Hungarians were safely back in Pola.

The objective of the bombardment of Ancona was to delay the Italian Army from deploying its forces along the border with Austria-Hungary by destroying critical transportation systems. The surprise attack on Ancona succeeded in delaying the Italian deployment to the Alps for two weeks. This delay gave Austria-Hungary valuable time to strengthen its Italian border and re-deploy some of its troops from the Eastern and Balkan fronts.

Aside from the attack on Ancona, the Austro-Hungarian battleships were largely confined to Pola for the duration of the war. Their operations were limited by Admiral Anton Haus, the commander of the Austro-Hungarian Navy, who believed that he would need to husband his ships to counter any Italian attempt to seize the Dalmatian coast. Since coal was diverted to the newer Tegetthoff-class battleships, the remainder of the war saw Zrínyi and the rest of the Austro-Hungarian Navy acting as a fleet in being. This resulted in the Allied blockade of the Otranto Strait. With his fleet blockaded in the Adriatic Sea, and with a shortage of coal, Haus followed a strategy based on mines and submarines designed to reduce the numerical superiority of the Allied navies.

Post-war fate

After the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed in 1918, the Austrians wanted to turn the fleet over to the newly created State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs (later to become a part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) in order to prevent the Italians from claiming the ships as spoils of war. However, the victorious Allies refused to acknowledge the conversations between the Austrians and the south Slavs and, in due course, reallocated the ships. The ship had been boarded by a scratch Yugoslav crew on 10 November 1918, one day before the Armistice, and had left Pola along with her sister ship, Radetzky. They were soon spotted by heavy Italian ships, so the two battleships hoisted American flags and sailed south along the Adriatic coast to Castelli Bay near Spalato (also known as Split). They appealed for American naval forces to meet them and accept their surrender, which a squadron of United States Navy (USN) submarine chasers in the area did. She had apparently been turned over to the fledgling south Slav state, as it was a Croat naval officer, Korvettenkapitän Marijan Polić, who presented the ship as a prize of war to representatives of the United States Navy on the afternoon of 22 November 1919 at Spalato (Split) in Dalmatia. Simultaneously she was commissioned as USS Zrínyi and Lieutenant E.E. Hazlett, USN, assumed command. The initial American complement consisted of four officers and 174 enlisted men—the latter entirely composed of United States Navy Reserve Force personnel. The ship remained at anchor at Spalato for nearly a year while the negotiations that would determine her ultimate fate dragged on. Only once did she apparently turn her engines over, and that occurred during a severe gale that struck Spalato on 9 February 1920.

On the morning of 7 November 1920, Zrínyi was decommissioned. USS Chattanooga (CL-18) took her in tow and, assisted by USS Brooks (DD-232) and USS Hovey (DD-208), towed the battleship to Italy. Under the terms of the treaties of Versailles and St. Germain, Zrínyi was ultimately turned over to the Italian government at Venice. She was broken up for scrap later that year and into 1921.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: SMS Zrínyi


text:
Shell pavement design method

The Shell pavement design method was used in many countries for the design of new pavements made of asphalt. First published in 1963, it was the first mechanistic design method, providing a procedure that was no longer based on codification of historic experience but instead that permitted computation of strain levels at key positions in the pavement. By analyzing different proposed constructions (layer materials and thicknesses), the procedure allowed a designer to keep the tensile strain at the bottom of the asphalt at a level less than a critical value and to keep the vertical strain at the top of the subgrade less than another critical value. With these two strains kept, respectively, within the design limits, premature fatigue failure in the asphalt and rutting of the pavement would be precluded. Relationships linking strain values to fatigue and rutting permitted a user to design a pavement able to carry almost any desired number of transits of standard wheel loads.

In such structural road design, the main inputs consist of soil parameters, parameters (thickness and stiffness) for the other road foundation materials, and the expected number of times a standard load will pass over. The output of the calculation is the thickness of the asphalt layer.

Originally published for highway design, it was expanded to include a procedure for airfields in the early 1970s. New criteria were added in 1978.

The approach put forward in the shell pavement design method formed the basis for most early mechanistic structural road design methods, while the AASHTO Mechanistic Empirical Design Guide (the 'MEPDG'), first published in 2004, is, in effect, a modern successor.

title: Shell pavement design method


text:
Talk:Comparison of American and British English/Archive 1

How about dust bin vs. trash can vs. round file? TV vs. Tele? eye glasses vs. spectacles.
 * I know that in New Zealand English, "telly" = US "TV". I don't recall ever hearing anyone there use "TV", though they're familiar with the term from American television shows (ironic, isn't it, in a way? *grin*).  I didn't add it in because I don't know whether "telly" is common parlance in the UK.  pgdudda
 * It is (as in Teletubbies) -- User:GWO

Can someone confirm the followings: muffin vs. English muffin? taxi vs. cab? police vs. cop? garage vs. auto shop? parking vs. garage? canteen vs. cafeteria? merry go round vs. carousel? xerox vs photocopier? wheels vs. rims or links? turn signals vs. blinkers? drug vs. medicine?
 * Off the cuff Brit opinion: Brits mainly call taxis taxis, except the London 'Black Cabs'; for Cop compare British Copper (a bit old fashioned); UK garage = US auto shop or US garage; UK Car Park = US Parking Lot; Brits use both Merry Go Round and Carousel; US xerox = UK photocopier; not heard of rims, links??; US turn signals = UK indicators (v. rarely blinkers); Brits use Drug and Medicine but Medicine more common. Enchanter

 * Rims and links are two different names for the metal parts of the wheel, excluding the rubber tire. How do the Brits call them?

 * If whoever wrote this still wants an answer - define "link". The wheel rim is the same in both (assuming it refers to the outer bit of the metal wheel).Bagpuss

This is such a fun entry. -- Devotchka

I once had a coworker from Korea and not only couldn't she tell the difference between USA-English and British English, she had trouble telling the difference between different European languages. (Kind of keeps things in perspective, eh?) :-)
 * Not suprising. While I can easily tell the difference between French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, etc., put me in a room with a Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and a Thai speaker and I probably couldn't tell the difference. (If I saw it written I'd probably have somewhat more luck though.) -- SJK

Vietnamese has more syllable-final consonants than Japanese, I think you can tell them apart that way, maybe. Is this right? - Juuitchan

Someone suggested: "Heath Robinson" and ";Rube Goldberg" as a vocabulary difference. It's certainly an interesting parallel, but I don't think it really belongs here. They were both artists with their own style, and both are known on both sides of the pond although their use as descriptive adjectives is split as suggested. At any rate, they can't quite be considered translations, because as an adjective, "Rube Goldberg" is more specific, describing an overly complex mechanical device or a complex series of interdependent actions; Heath Robinson, in contrast, is more surrealistic or fantasy-oriented. --LDC

As an American, I would like to say that to me a bum is a homeless person as much as the butt, a flat is an apartment, and rubbish certainly is trash. Granted, I agree that a fag is not a cigarette, and underground is not a subway. I may do some actual research, and come back and fiddle with that list. - Eean.

 * I think Americans certainly understand the use of "bum" for "butt", "rubbish" for "trash", and (to a lesser degree) "flat" for "apartment". But we don't use those terms much.  Point to a container for discarded things, and an American will say "that's a trash can"; a Brit will say "that's a rubbish bin".  Americans are more likely to use "rubbish" in the sense of "bullshit". --LDC

I deleted the following pair: "limited (Ltd)" and "incorporated", since they actually mean different things. "Incorporated" means a corporation; "limited" means a limited liability corporation (you can also have unlimited liability corporations, and no liability corporations). British (and Australian also) Ltd is roughly equivalent to American LLC. -- SJK

I would say 'torch' was much more common than 'pocket lamp' which sounds quite old-fashioned. 'Flashlight' would be more easily recognised than the latter.

Yes, I'd call it a "torch", and it would probably be labeled as a "flashlight" in its manufacturer's packaging. IMO, 'torch' is colloquial British English -- The Anome

Oh, so "flashlight" is correct British usage? (My dictionary said [Am.] and the Oxford English Dictionary carried "flashlight" only in the meaning of photography.) Then I'll remove the entry again. --AxelBoldt

No, I disagree, it's only a "torch" in BrE. The term "flashlight" if it occurs is still a striking Americanism, even if a manufacturer calls it that. - Gritchka -- Would anyone be terribly put out if I table-ized the lists? I realize that rendering the various vocabulary lists in HTML tables makes life more difficult for those who don't know how to create such code, so I'll understand if people prefer to leave things "as-is". (But I think I detect a feature request in the making here... quick'n'easy WikiTables, anyone?)  -- pgdudda, 2002.03.09

 * 2002.03.22: Having noted no objections, I've rendered the vocabulary lists into HTML tables. Thanks!  pgdudda

''[fanny (UK) = penis (US)? am I right?]''
 * UK "fanny" means "vagina" (as is noted in the UK-to-US section). US "fanny" means "buttocks" (UK "bum"). On top of that, you put that into the US-to-UK section by mistake... ;)

and while we're on those lines... "fanny pack" (US) -> "bumper pack" (UK) is one I've not heard of. "Bum bag" is the nearest UK term for these things that I've ever heard of.... But then I live way out in a rural area away from the Big City Malcolm Farmer
 * You quite possibly may be right. I was simply going on the story of an American exchange student who had spent a year in the UK, and had caused herself extreme embarrassment the first time she referred to the small satchel strapped around her waist as her "fanny pack" (meaning "pack that rides on my butt").  She was told to refer to it as a "bumper pack".  Needless to say, she never repeated that mistake again!  *grin*  pgdudda

Reading the "American" example of "fitted" --Isn't Michael Crichton British? JHK

No, he is one of yours! Deb

-- "Tap" isn't restricted to beer; the things in my bathroom are taps. Not that giving the world at large the impression that wikipedians are closet alcoholics is necessarily a bad thing... ;-) -- Tarquin

 * I believe so as well. Straight "faucet" is more common, at least in the Pacific Northwest, than "tap", but "tap" is still used frequently (the term "tap water" is actually extremely common). I think it should probably be dumped from the page, or at least qualified as something along the lines of "tap alone is usualy understood to reffer to the "tap" of a beer keg, but is not restricted to that". nknight 20:48 Dec 19, 2002 (UTC)

According to Merriam-Webster OnLine, "stroller" means a pushchair (not a pram, as the article claims). Can someone confirm this? --Zundark, Thursday, June 13, 2002
 * "Pushchair" seems appropriate. It seems to me that the more usual translation for "pram" (or "perambulator") is "baby buggy" or "baby buggy" or often just simply "buggy". What distinguishes a "stroller" from these is that it is a much lighter object that is used after a child has mastered sitting-up, and has begun to develop his walking skills.  A stroller can be collapsed into a carryable object to be brought out when it's time for a nap, or as a threat to a wandering two-year-old's mobility.  IMOH there is a trend away from bulky expensive baby-buggies for the pre-ambulatory, and a preference for back-pack and similar arrangements.
 * According to the New Oxford the word "stroller" takes on yet another meaning in South Africa, where it can refer to a young urban vagrant or street child. Eclecticology

On pronunciation, I am puzzled by the claim that AmE collapses the vowels of "all" and "awl", since I don't know of an accent that distinguishes these. They're both [O:l] in BrE and similar accents (such as Australian). - Gritchka

A couple of points:

''The "a" of father is used in many British words, especially common ones, in two phonetic situations. Firstly, before three of the four voiceless fricatives, as in path, laugh, chaff, pass, past, though not before sh. Secondly, before some instances of n and another consonant, as in aunt, plant, dance. (Australian does not follow British in this second case.) But by no means all words follow this pattern, e.g. ant is the same as in American.''

This is far from universal in England, though it is the "received pronunciation". All Northern English accents use the flat "a", as in America.

Secondly, should this page be called "American and English English Differences". The Scottish British is Substantially different, though Welsh English is no more different than regional English usages.

 * The article begins by describing how Standard British needs to be understood - certain forms of Southern England English. See my remark below on dividing up dialects. There just is no simple name for the non-American variety we're comparing. Gritchka

I have described the british meaning of ass as donkey, burro. My wife (from Texas ) uses burro, but I don't know if this is regional usage or standard AE Chris Q 09:02 Sep 12, 2002 (UTC)

Burro is Spanish for donkey. There are a lot of Spanish speakers in Texas so Spanish words are more commonly used by English speakers in Texas than in, say Indiana. Derek

"Ass", "donkey", and "burro" are all standard American English, and should be understood anywhere. Americans generally only use "ass" for its other meanings, and "burro" is more commonly used in Spanish-influenced areas like Texas and California, but they're still all quite common. (As a totally irellevant aside, "burro" is also slang for "buttocks" in Spanish--I'm sure there's an interesting reason for that, but I have no idea what it is.) --LDC

I would like to add the British/American use of "rubbish" and/or "trash" as a verb, if they have different meanings. In Britain they have two different meanings.

 * (UK) To rubbish something, is to talk badly about it. He rubbished Fred's house... he said it was useless, run down, untidy etc.
 * (UK) To trash something is to physically destroy it. He trashed Fred's house... he smashed all the windows, broke the furniture etc.

I am not sure of the US meanings, are they the same?

 * we use "trash" for both. "Rubbish" we (some of us) understand as a noun, but we never use it as a verb.  Trash a hotel room, trash a reputation.... This usage does of course call for the occasional clarification.  "You mean physically, or he just talked bad about it?"  --KQ

Chris Q - thanks for fixing the comment on RP - I was just going back to do it - honest!

A comment about the singular "they" - surely this is not solely an aspect of British English - I've heard it used just about everywhere (US, Oz, NZ, that is) as a less cumbersome version of he/she (ditto "their" instead of "his/her"). There's an etymological justice to this: "you" was originally plural only, the singular was "thou", but "thou" died out and got replaced by it's plural. - Manning

 * The statement as it appears in the article is confusing, but I think it's trying to say that the use of singular they is somewhat more acceptable in writen usage in Britain than in the US. I have no idea if this is true. --Brion

How about "Oriental" traditionally in British English it refers to the middle-east, but in US English and in modern British English it refers to the east asia area ?

 * I think we (British) use "Oriental" to refer to the far east, Orientals are what Americans would call Asians. In the US refering to someone as Oriental is non-PC.

 * During the Victorian period "Oriental" often meant the Middle-East. By the time of World War II the term meant the Far East. The "East" was often linked with the Silk Route to China and the countries associated with it. The area around Malaysia, Thailand, etc. were referred to as the &quot;South Sea". I think it is just one of those terms that changed its meaning during the Imperial period.

''Though most English accents pronounce the T's in words as a distinctive T it is common, particularly in Estuary English? to replace the T with a glottal stop. ''

 * Does anyone know the rules for this, for example "I stopped at the pottery on Saturday" would be pronounced as "I stopped at the po'ery on Sa'urday". Why is the T in stopped pronounced?

 * I would assume only intervocalic T's are realized as glottal stops. In 'stopped' it's part of a consonant cluster rather than sitting between nice comfy vowels where it can sink into the cushions of the mouth and stop in the glottis. --Brion

 * This is where the idea of "British" English breaks down. Different dialects handle this differently.  Some use glottal stops commonly whereas others use them only rarely. -- Derek Ross

 * If anyone can devise a culturally neutral name for picking out the Standard British dialect, I shall be eternally grateful. Essentially the main dialects are Southern British, Northern British, Scottish, American, and Caribbean. The Southern British dialect covers a host of different accents, RP and Estuary and Welsh and Australasian and South African. 'Standard British' is okay to cover RP and Estuary, but we want a term that includes the southern hemisphere accents and is opposed as a whole to American (as a vocabulary source) or to Standard American (rhotic accents only). Any takers? ;-) Gritchka

 * And while they're about it, they can devise a Standard British dialect to go with the culturally neutral name. :) Derek Ross

 * On the specific point of glottalling, traditional RP has none and London Cockney (not a form of Standard British) probably only keeps [t] initially and after [s], as in tar, star, dust, dusty, and I'm not even sure about dust. Elsewhere it's [?], as in [wEn?] went, [wIn?a] winter etc. The modern form of RP and full-blown Estuary English are intermediate. An RP speaker these days will probably use [?] before a consonant, in casual speech: [nQ? ri:li] not really. The change to Estuary includes more glottalling, intervocalic and final: [nQ? @ lQ?] not a lot. Estuary seems to be replacing RP as de facto standard, so this tendency will count as, if it does not yet, part of Standard British. Gritchka

User:Kwertii I've never heard the word Binky for pacifier. The British word is Dummy so I'll change it.

A question for US speakers: In the UK we call the floor at ground level the ground floor and the floor above that the first floor whilst in th US these are known as the first floor and the second floor respectively. Does the ground floor have any meaning in the US? i.e. is it a synonym for the first floor or is it unknown. I wish to know which list to put these phrases in.
 * The ground floor is a synonym for the first floor. Tokerboy
 * Thanks Tokerboy! Mintguy 01:23 Dec 4, 2002 (UTC)

I've lived in America my entire life and I have never seen "amoeba" or "aesthetic" spelled "ameba" or "esthetic". Am I weird? Tokerboy 01:55 Dec 4, 2002 (UTC)
 * No I think there are a few inaccuracies in this article, caused by the very differences it discusses. "Binky" and "Bumper Bag" (should be Bum Bag) were two items listed as British that I'd never heard of. Mintguy

I've taken both out. I've seen these spellings maybe a half dozen times in my life, and all of them were in casual conversation and all were cases where the writer had /no/ clue how they were actually spelled. nknight 20:39 Dec 19, 2002 (UTC)

Kwertii, I've taken them out again. These bastardizations are not in real use in the United States, they simply are not there. This is based on what is in common usage, not what might be plausible. nknight 05:00 Dec 20, 2002 (UTC)

I've lived in the US my entire life, and I've seen both lots of times. "esthetic" is pretty uncommon, but not unheard of, and "ameba" is somewhat more common:

 * http://www.biologycorner.com/worksheets/amebacolor.html
 * http://www.bartleby.com/65/am/ameba.html
 * http://www.ndif.org/Terms/ameba.html
 * http://pittsford.monroe.edu/jefferson/calfieri/Animals/Ameba.html
 * http://amebamarketing.com/
 * http://shadowboxent.brinkster.net/ameba.html
 * etc. (search on google for lots more references)

 * http://www.estheticacademy.org/
 * http://www.echonyc.com/~onissues/su98coventry.html
 * http://www.starsmile.com/
 * http://estheticvisionsdentalarts.com/
 * http://www.estheticsupersite.com/
 * etc. (again, lots more examples on google)

I'm an American and "ameba" looks laughably misspelled to me; I was surprised to note that the dictionary I checked listed it as an alternate spelling, as I too have never seen it used. At such it's a poor and misleading example. Perhaps it was more common in the past, or in certain quarters? "Esthetic" seems okay, though. --Brion 03:03 Dec 21, 2002 (UTC)

Ameba is by no means uncommon, though perhaps less common than "amoeba". Regardless of how it looks or whether it's "correct" or not, lots of Americans indisputably spell it as "ameba", (including some biology texts, incidentally); therefore I have to say I think it's a perfectly valid example. User:kwertii

 * The British expression "I couldn't care less" is rendered as "I could care less" in the US. To a British English speaker this appears to mean the opposite.

I'm a native American English speaker, and I think both of these expressions are synonyms meaning "I do not care at all." Any other American types agree? And what is the British meaning of these two?

--Ryguasu 02:00 Dec 4, 2002 (UTC)

"I could care less" is never used in the UK and if you said it to a Brit he would probably think you mis-said it and might even try to correct you. Mintguy 02:07 Dec 4, 2002 (UTC)

But "I couldn't care less" still means that you don't care, right? --Ryguasu
 * It means "I couldn't care less". i.e. I care so little that there is no room for me to care less.

"I could care less" is equally bad American. The people who say it are just being lazy. It does mean the opposite of what they're trying to say. -- Zoe

 * No, it is an American idiom. It doesn't make sense but millions of people say it.  It has nothing to to with laziness.  It means "I don't care."  It is synonymous with "I couldn't care less", also an idiom, a little more logical, that also means "I don't care."  Ortolan88
 * I always thought the idiom arouse as a contraction of "I could care less, but not much less" (or sentiments like that). But I don't know anything -- User:GWO

Entree is a weird one. entree is French and means first course or what you call the appetizer. How the hell did this one get so mixed up. what is it for Canadians? Mintguy 02:17 Dec 4, 2002 (UTC)
 * I was told it meant first course in Canada. Mind you, I had no idea what it meant at all, so it may not be that common a term in the UK. Bagpuss

Is the American normalcy for normality a one-off, or would we also have totalcy for totality, brutalcy for brutality etc? -- Chris Q 14:41 Feb 10, 2003 (UTC)

 * Not really. We Americans have both words:
 * normality means all the normal things, including chemistry, etc.
 * normalcy means "the usual condition of things, particularly political, social, or economic", as in, "the return to normalcy after the war".
 * It is popular to consider normalcy an irregular usage, but it is far too common in this single specialized meaning to be disdained. Ortolan88

 * Some dictionaries list normalcy as meaning just "normality". I was told in school that "normalcy" was coined by Warren G Harding.  "A return to normalcy" or something like that.  In any case, I almost never hear it in spoken American English.CyborgTosser 21:08, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Could someone explain what cafe means in America? The article says "French cafe", but what's that? I'd always thought they meant pretty much the same thing. Bagpuss

It'd be good to dump that stuff about using Southern Jessieish as standard "British English", too. A lot of the stuff now mentions dialects, but I don't know if we're quite ready yet.

Talking of which, I've never heard anyone pronounce "chaff" as "charf", so I'm taking that out. Willing to admit I could be wrong, though.Bagpuss

"Some Americans differentiate between 'aunt' and 'ant', but some do not." - I dumped this, too as the same is true in the UK. It may have a place in the article, but it seemed a bit incongruous where it was. Bagpuss

In Hiberno-English 'ride' is slang for 'sex' or someone who you want to a sex with, as in 'He is a ride'. I am not sure if it exists in British-English. (One one notorious TV moment, a gang of Irish tourists being followed by a TV programme went into hysterics at the sight of an American tour guide in Disneyland, who told them (and couldn't understand why it was producing such merriment) how Disneyland had the biggest 'rides' in America, how she loved 'riding' everywhere around Disneyland, how tourists came from all over the world to 'ride' in Disneyland, and how she had possibly had more 'rides' in Disneyland than anyone else. Result: fifteen Irish people with tears in their eyes from laughing, almost collapsing onto the group, as the woman says "Gee. You Irish! Ok. You wanna ride with me?" Does anyone know if 'ride' has the same sexual meanings in British-English as Hiberno-English? (Obviously, unless the Disneyland Madam didn't know her American-English, 'ride' doesn't have sexual connotations in the US.) JTD 21:37 Feb 16, 2003 (UTC)

 * No. Ride in that context isn't used in British English, except where it might be blatently obvious that you mean a euphemism for sex. Mintguy

 * Ride in a sexual context is certainly understood in USA English (going back at least to the 1920s with old blues songs refering to "Easy rider", and appearing in such slang phrases as "moustache ride") but the non sexual meaning is far more common. Most Americans wouldn't have noticed any sort of double entendre in the Disneyland tourguide's statement. -- Infrogmation

 * There was some old television series set in England with an American female lead, whose character's first name was Randy. Every time she introduced herself to the English people on the show, they'd all go off into peals of laughter. -- Zoe

 * That reminds me of the "Jessie" mention Night-Rider. I was a student when that was first broadcast (in a Nothern University) and everytime there was a comment like "There is a Jessie waiting for you" there were fits of laughter, followed by someone saying "eee, ya big girl's blouse!". -- Chris Q 07:27 Feb 17, 2003 (UTC)

Yes, Jessie'' is a slang term meaning camp queen (which on this side of the Atlantic is a camp gay man) or in some areas simply gay. JTD 02:03 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

Does 'Randy' not mean. . . well. . . randy (ie, sex-mad or sex-starved and look for sex) in the US? On a totally different point - do we include words that mean the same but in a different context in either the US or UK mean the opposite of what you would presume? For example:

In the US - public school means ordinary school In the UK - public school means fee paying elitist private school. eg, Eton. JTD 01:18 Feb 17, 2003 (UTC)

 * In rural southern Ontario Protestant english (I can't speak for other areas or for the minority of people who went through Catholic schools) a public school is the school one goes to before high school (or before Junior High if there happens to be one). It is equivalent to elementary school. --p. stoltzfus

No, randy has no sexual connotation in the US at all. -- Zoe
 * Since Austin Powers, a lot of Americans are at least aware of the meaning as a Britishism, though no one really uses it. Tuf-Kat

What does camp (as a description of a person) mean in the US? In Britain it refers to an overtly feminate, foppish homosexual male. I get the impression that in the US it is used to describe what we would call a "ham actor". It does not appear to have homosexual connotations. -- Chris Q 07:30 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)
 * It does have that connotation, I think, but to a much lesser degree. Most Americans would never think of describing a gay man as camp, though many or most would get it if someone else did so.  In this sense, the word is simply not used in the US.  From a literary POV, on college campuses and the like, camp refers to (I think) movies and plays and such that are not enjoyed on the basis of how good they are, but on the basis of how bad they are due to ham acting and other weaknesses.  In spite of this, the term is also used to describe genuinely quality stories like The Rocky Horror Picture Show which is camp because it is flamboyantly sexually ambiguous and does not rely on traditional notions of quality in order to tell its story (still a connection to flaming homosexuals, a much more common term that may be unique to the US).  In conclusion, I don't know, though most Americans would never think of referring to an outrageously feminine gay man with camp, even if they understand what it means. Tuf-Kat

 * I may have misinterpeted you. In the US, if the average person sees a flaboyantly gay man on the street, they'd say "wow, that dude is flaming".  Nobody would say "wow, that dude is camp". Tuf-Kat

 * No your explanation is fine. It seems that camp in the US is one of those difficult to pin down concepts. Another American said to me "well I can't really describe what it means, but you know it when you see it!" -- Chris Q 08:06 Feb 19, 2003 (UTC)


text:
Fitness (biology)

Fitness (often denoted $$w$$ or ω in population genetics models) is a quantitative representation of individual reproductive success. It is also equal to the average contribution to the gene pool of the next generation, made by the same individuals of the specified genotype or phenotype. Fitness can be defined either with respect to a genotype or to a phenotype in a given environment or time. The fitness of a genotype is manifested through its phenotype, which is also affected by the developmental environment. The fitness of a given phenotype can also be different in different selective environments.

With asexual reproduction, it is sufficient to assign fitnesses to genotypes. With sexual reproduction, recombination scrambles alleles into different genotypes every generation; in this case, fitness values can be assigned to alleles by averaging over possible genetic backgrounds. Natural selection tends to make alleles with higher fitness more common over time, resulting in Darwinian evolution.

The term "Darwinian fitness" can be used to make clear the distinction with physical fitness. Fitness does not include a measure of survival or life-span; Herbert Spencer's well-known phrase "survival of the fittest" should be interpreted as: "Survival of the form (phenotypic or genotypic) that will leave the most copies of itself in successive generations."

Inclusive fitness differs from individual fitness by including the ability of an allele in one individual to promote the survival and/or reproduction of other individuals that share that allele, in preference to individuals with a different allele. To avoid double counting, inclusive fitness excludes the contribution of other individuals to the survival and reproduction of the focal individual. One mechanism of inclusive fitness is kin selection.

Fitness as propensity
Fitness is often defined as a propensity or probability, rather than the actual number of offspring. For example, according to Maynard Smith, "Fitness is a property, not of an individual, but of a class of individuals—for example homozygous for allele A at a particular locus. Thus the phrase 'expected number of offspring' means the average number, not the number produced by some one individual. If the first human infant with a gene for levitation were struck by lightning in its pram, this would not prove the new genotype to have low fitness, but only that the particular child was unlucky."

Alternatively, "the fitness of the individual—having an array x of phenotypes—is the probability, s(x), that the individual will be included among the group selected as parents of the next generation."

Models of fitness
In order to avoid the complications of sex and recombination, the concept of fitness is presented below in the restricted setting of an asexual population without genetic recombination. Thus, fitnesses can be assigned directly to genotypes. There are two commonly used operationalizations of fitness – absolute fitness and relative fitness.

Absolute fitness
The absolute fitness ($$W$$) of a genotype is defined as the proportional change in the abundance of that genotype over one generation attributable to selection. For example, if $$ n(t) $$ is the abundance of a genotype in generation $$t$$ in an infinitely large population (so that there is no genetic drift), and neglecting the change in genotype abundances due to mutations, then

 * $$n(t+1)=Wn(t)$$.

An absolute fitness larger than 1 indicates growth in that genotype's abundance; an absolute fitness smaller than 1 indicates decline.

Relative fitness
Whereas absolute fitness determines changes in genotype abundance, relative fitness ($$w$$) determines changes in genotype frequency. If $$N(t)$$ is the total population size in generation $$t$$, and the relevant genotype's frequency is $$p(t)=n(t)/N(t)$$, then

 * $$p(t+1)=\frac{w}{\overline{w}}p(t)$$,

where $$\overline{w}$$ is the mean relative fitness in the population (again setting aside changes in frequency due to drift and mutation). Relative fitnesses only indicate the change in prevalence of different genotypes relative to each other, and so only their values relative to each other are important; relative fitnesses can be any nonnegative number, including 0. It is often convenient to choose one genotype as a reference and set its relative fitness to 1. Relative fitness is used in the standard Wright–Fisher and Moran models of population genetics.

Absolute fitnesses can be used to calculate relative fitness, since $$p(t+1)=n(t+1)/N(t+1)=(W/\overline{W})p(t)$$ (we have used the fact that $$N(t+1)=\overline{W} N(t) $$, where $$\overline{W}$$ is the mean absolute fitness in the population). This implies that $$w/\overline{w}=W/\overline{W}$$, or in other words, relative fitness is proportional to $$W/\overline{W}$$. It is not possible to calculate absolute fitnesses from relative fitnesses alone, since relative fitnesses contain no information about changes in overall population abundance $$N(t)$$.

Assigning relative fitness values to genotypes is mathematically appropriate when two conditions are met: first, the population is at demographic equilibrium, and second, individuals vary in their birth rate, contest ability, or death rate, but not a combination of these traits.

Change in genotype frequencies due to selection

The change in genotype frequencies due to selection follows immediately from the definition of relative fitness,

 * $$\Delta p = p(t+1)-p(t)=\frac{w-\overline{w}}{\overline{w}}p(t) $$.

Thus, a genotype's frequency will decline or increase depending on whether its fitness is lower or greater than the mean fitness, respectively.

In the particular case that there are only two genotypes of interest (e.g. representing the invasion of a new mutant allele), the change in genotype frequencies is often written in a different form. Suppose that two genotypes $$ A $$ and $$ B $$ have fitnesses $$w_A$$ and $$w_B$$, and frequencies $$p$$ and $$1-p$$, respectively. Then $$\overline{w}=w_A p + w_B (1-p)$$, and so

 * $$\Delta p = \frac{w-\overline{w}}{\overline{w}}p = \frac{w_A-w_B}{\overline{w}}p(1-p) $$.

Thus, the change in genotype $$A$$'s frequency depends crucially on the difference between its fitness and the fitness of genotype $$B$$. Supposing that $$A$$ is more fit than $$B$$, and defining the selection coefficient $$s$$ by $$w_A=(1+s)w_B$$, we obtain

 * $$\Delta p = \frac{w-\overline{w}}{\overline{w}}p = \frac{s}{1+sp}p(1-p)\approx sp(1-p) $$,

where the last approximation holds for $$s\ll 1$$. In other words, the fitter genotype's frequency grows approximately logistically.

History
The British sociologist Herbert Spencer coined the phrase "survival of the fittest" in his 1864 work Principles of Biology to characterise what Charles Darwin had called natural selection.

The British-Indian biologist J.B.S. Haldane was the first to quantify fitness, in terms of the modern evolutionary synthesis of Darwinism and Mendelian genetics starting with his 1924 paper A Mathematical Theory of Natural and Artificial Selection. The next further advance was the introduction of the concept of inclusive fitness by the British biologist W.D. Hamilton in 1964 in his paper on The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaviour.

Genetic load
Genetic load measures the average fitness of a population of individuals, relative either to a theoretical genotype of optimal fitness, or relative to the most fit genotype actually present in the population. Consider n genotypes $$ \mathbf{A} _1 \dots \mathbf{A} _n$$, which have the fitnesses $$w_1 \dots w_n$$ and the genotype frequencies $$p_1 \dots p_n$$ respectively. Ignoring frequency-dependent selection, then genetic load ($$L$$) may be calculated as:

 * $$L = {{w_\max - \bar w}\over w_\max}$$

Genetic load may increase when deleterious mutations, migration, inbreeding, or outcrossing lower mean fitness. Genetic load may also increase when beneficial mutations increase the maximum fitness against which other mutations are compared; this is known as the substitutional load or cost of selection.

title: Fitness (biology)


text:
Fitness

Fitness may refer to:

 * Physical fitness, a state of health and well-being of the body
 * Fitness culture, a sociocultural phenomenon surrounding exercise and physical fitness
 * Fitness (biology), an individual's ability to propagate its genes
 * Fitness (cereal), a brand of breakfast cereals and granola bars
 * Fitness (magazine), a women's magazine, focusing on health and exercise
 * Fitness and figure competition, a form of physique training, related to bodybuilding
 * Fitness approximation, a method of function optimization evolutionary computation or artificial evolution methodologies
 * Fitness function, a particular type of objective function in mathematics and computer science
 * "Fitness", a 2018 song by Lizzo

title: Fitness


text:
Structural road design

Structural road design aims to ensure the road is strong enough for the expected number of vehicles in a certain number of years. The input of a calculation is the number expected of vehicles (e.g. 10,000,000) divided in groups (e.g. trucks, vans, cars) and the number of years that the road has to function before the road structure has to be fully renewed (e.g. 20 years).

The given example of 20 years does not mean that there is no maintenance during this period. There is a certain amount of maintenance, but it can be scheduled and is low.

For asphalt, the Shell pavement design method is often used.

title: Structural road design


text:
Joseph Lamb (composer)

Joseph Francis Lamb (December 6, 1887 – September 3, 1960) was an American composer of ragtime music. Lamb, of Irish descent, was the only non-African American of the "Big Three" composers of classical ragtime, the other two being Scott Joplin and James Scott. The ragtime of Joseph Lamb ranges from standard popular fare to complex and highly engaging. His use of long phrases was influenced by classical works he had learned from his sister and others while growing up, but his sense of structure was potentially derived from his study of Joplin's piano rags. By the time he added some polish to his later works in the 1950s, Lamb had mastered the classic rag genre in a way that almost no other composer was able to approach at that time, and continued to play it passably as well, as evidenced by at least two separate recordings done in his home, as well as a few recorded interviews.

Life and career
Lamb was born in Montclair, New Jersey. The youngest of four children, he taught himself to play the piano and admired the early ragtime publications of Scott Joplin. His first known works were "Meet Me at the Chutes," and "Idle Dreams", at the age of 13 in 1900, but they are unpublished and assumed lost.

While living in Toronto, Canada in his teenage years, he published several march and waltz compositions for Harry H. Sparks Music Publisher. Most notable were "The Lilliputian's Bazaar", "Celestine Waltzes", and "Florentine". Most were published after he left Canada.

He dropped out of St. Jerome's College in 1904 to work for a dry goods company. He met Joplin in 1907 while purchasing the latest Joplin and Scott sheet music in the offices of John Stark & Son. Joplin was impressed with Lamb's compositions and recommended him to ragtime publisher John Stark. Stark published Lamb's music for the next decade, starting with "Sensation".

Lamb's twelve rags published by Stark from 1908 to 1919 can be divided into two groups. The "heavy" rags are incorporated with Joplin's melody–dominated style and Scott's expansive use of the keyboard registers. This style includes "Ethiopia Rag" (1909), "Excelsior Rag" (1909), "American Beauty Rag" (1913), "Nightingale Rag" (1915), and "The Top Liner Rag" (1916). The "light" rags with the cakewalk tradition show the narrow-range melodies inspired by Joplin. This style of rags includes "Champagne Rag" (1910), "Cleopatra Rag" (1915), "Reindeer: Ragtime Two Step" (1915), and "Bohemia Rag" (1919). "Contentment Rag" (1915) and "Patricia Rag" (1916) have characteristics of both "heavy" and "light" rags.

Lamb used sequence for development purposes. He emphasized the harmonic sonority of the diminished seventh with upper-neighbor appoggiatura. He surpassed ragtime's usual four-measure phrase structure.

In 1911, Lamb married his first wife, Henrietta Schultz, and moved to Brooklyn, New York. He worked as an arranger for the J. Fred Helf Music Publishing Company and later, starting in April 1914, as an accountant for L. F. Dommerich & Company. They had one son, Joseph Jr., together, in 1915. Henrietta died of influenza in 1920 about the same time that popular music interest shifted from ragtime to jazz. Lamb stopped publishing his music, playing and composing only as a hobby. "Bohemia Rag" was published in 1919.

Jack Mills, Inc. hired Lamb to write four novelty piano solos, (being 'Cinders', 'Shooting the Works', 'Chime In', and 'Crimson Rambler') in the early 1920s, but these were unpublished and lost until the 2010s.

Lamb married Amelia Collins in 1922. They had four children; Patricia (1924–2022), Richard (1926-?) Robert (1927–2023), and

Donald (1930–2003).

With the revival of interest in ragtime in the 1950s, Lamb shared his memories of Joplin and other early ragtime figures with music historians. Many were surprised to find that not only was he still living but that he was white. He composed new rags, brought out compositions that had never been published, and made recordings. A year before his death in 1960 the album Joseph Lamb: A Study in Classic Ragtime was released by Folkways Records. He died of a heart attack in Brooklyn at age 72.

Rags Published By John Stark
Sensation Rag (1908)

Ethiopia Rag (1909)

Excelsior Rag (1909)

Champagne Rag (1910)

American Beauty Rag (1913)

Contentment Rag (1915)

Ragtime Nightingale (1915)

Cleopatra Rag (1915)

Reindeer Rag (1915)

Top Liner Rag (1916)

Patricia Rag (1916)

Bohemia Rag (1919)

Additional rags (1959 - 1966)
Alabama Rag

Alaskan Rag

Arctic Sunset

Beehive Rag

Bird Brain Rag

Blue Grass Rag

Chasin' the Chippies (1914)

Chimes of Dixie

Chime In

Cinders

Cottontail Rag

Crimson Rambler

Firefly Rag

Good and Plenty Rag

Greased Lightning (c. 1907)

Hot Cinders

Hyacinth - A Rag (1907)

Jersey Rag

Joe Lamb's Old Rag (c. 1908 ‘’Originally titled: “Dynamite Rag”’’)

The Old Home Rag

Ragged Rapids Rag (1905)

Ragtime Bobolink

Ragtime Special (c. 1908)

Rapid Transit (c. 1907)

Ragtime Reverie

Shootin’ the Works

Spanish Fly (1912)

Thoroughbred Rag

Toad Stool Rag

Walper House Rag (1903)

== Other Selected Songs, Waltzes, and Marches. ==

title: Joseph Lamb (composer)


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James Scott (composer)

James Sylvester Scott (February 12, 1885 – August 30, 1938) was an American ragtime composer and pianist. He is regarded as one of the "Big Three" composers of classical ragtime along with Scott Joplin and Joseph Lamb.

Early life and education
Scott was born in Neosho, Missouri, to James Scott Sr., and Molly Thomas Scott, both former slaves. In 1901 his family moved to Carthage, Missouri, where he attended Lincoln High School. He was given a piano after taking music lessons. In 1902 he began working at the music store of Charles L. Dumars, first washing windows, then demonstrating music at the piano as a song plugger, including his own pieces. Demand for his music convinced Dumars to print the first of Scott's published compositions, "A Summer Breeze - March and Two Step", in 1903. By 1904, two more compositions by Scott, "Fascinator March" and "On the Pike March" were published and sold well, but not enough to keep Dumars in business and soon the company ceased publishing.

Career

Ragtime Historians Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis recount that Scott went to St. Louis, Missouri, in search of his idol Scott Joplin in 1905. He located Joplin and asked if he would listen to one of his ragtime compositions. Upon hearing the rag, Joplin introduced him to his own publisher, John Stillwell Stark, and recommended he publish the work. Stark published the rag a year later as "Frog Legs Rag". It quickly became a hit and was second in sales in the Stark catalogue only to that of Joplin's own "Maple Leaf Rag". Scott became a regular contributor to the Stark catalogue until 1922.

In 1914 Scott moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where he married Nora Johnson, taught music, and accompanied silent movies as an organist and arranger at the Panama Theater. Those that knew him recall that theater work was a large part of his activity. His cousin Patsy Thomas remembers, "Everybody called him 'Little Professor' He always walked rapidly, looking at the ground - would pass you on the street and never see you - seemed always deep in thought."

In the last years of his life, Scott busied himself with teaching, composing and leading an eight-piece band that played for various beer parks and movie theaters in the area. With the arrival of sound movies, however, his fortunes declined. He lost his theater work, his wife died without child, and his health deteriorated. He moved in with his cousin Ruth Callahan in Kansas City, Kansas, and even though was suffering from chronic dropsy, he continued to compose and play piano. He also worked as an accompanist for dances. Scott died at Douglas Hospital on August 30, 1938, at age 52 and was laid beside his wife in Westlawn Cemetery.

Scott's best-known compositions include "Climax Rag", '"Frog Legs Rag", "Grace and Beauty", "Ophelia Rag", and "The Ragtime Oriole".

Scott was a cousin of blues singer Ada Brown.

In popular culture
In the Third Season of the HBO series Boardwalk Empire, Scott is portrayed by an uncredited actor in the episode "Spaghetti and Coffee".

title: James Scott (composer)