Friday, June 03, 2005

The Fourth Quadrant

More weird childhood memories. The house where I grew up was techinically a rancher with a full basement, but it was built into a steep hill that left most of the basement above ground. The basement had the family room and the garage on the side sticking out of the hill. The other side had some odds and ends like the guest bedroom, guest bathroom, laundry room, and office. It was also known as the fourth quadrant. It didn't occur to me until years later that this was an awfully odd way to refer to a portion of your house. It works, certainly. If you stood facing the house in the back and looked at it like a cartesian x-y graph, the kitchen, living room, and dining room were the first quadrant, the bedrooms were the second quandrant, the family room and garage were the third quadrant, and the fourth quadrant was, well, the fourth quadrant. But who looks at their house like a cartesian graph? A mathematician and an engineer, that's who.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home