From Peter Taylor
Apparently mathematicians labelled the lifts in their building at the University of Tasmania, as Feedback suggests (21 April). There is a lift in a shopping centre in Stirling which must have been designed by a mathematician.
It serves three floors, which are marked in order from the lowest to the highest (in altitude): “-1”, “-3”, and “S” for the shopping level. The announcements made by the automatic system in the lift are consistent with this numbering in that when the lift ascends (in altitude), it announces “going down” and, when it descends, “going up”.
As a mathematician, used to highly generalised number systems, I do not have problems with this. I do wish, though, that the operators would expand the messages to something like “the distance from the heavens is going down” and vice versa so as to make everything a little clearer to non-mathematical users.
Stirling, UK
