Consider these     There is an apple, an orange and a banana on the table.      There are an apple, an orange and a banana on the table.   which one should I use?
This question is also open on EL&amp;U:   Considering the amount of controversy it aroused, I believe it's past "Learners'" level.    An edit was suggested to my sentence.     There was were an orange, some grapes, two apples and a small pile of cherries on the plate.   In my native language plurality of the verb always follows plurality of the first element on the list. There were an orange,... sounds awkward to me, no matter what follows up. My simple solution was reordering:     There were some grapes, an orange, two apples and a small pile of cherries on the plate.   But that's not the first time I faced this situation and I'd like to know what the rules of grammar say about that — was my editor overzealous or am I trying to copy rules of my language that don't apply in English?
How can I pass arguments to a batch file? I need to pass an ID and a password to a batch file at the time of running rather than hardcoding them into the file.  Here's what the command line looks like:  test.cmd admin P@55w0rd &gt; test-log.txt In Ubuntu, applications can be opened from a terminal. But sometimes it isn't clear what the appropriate command is to do this.  So, having an application open, how can I get the command used to launch it, without having to search anywhere (just by looking at it)? Animated textures don't work in Blender viewport playback This came to my mind after I learned the following from :  where T : struct   We, C# developers, all know the basics of C#. I mean declarations, conditionals, loops, operators, etc.  Some of us even mastered the stuff like , , , , ...  But what are the most hidden features or tricks of C# that even C# fans, addicts, experts barely know?  Here are the revealed features so far:    Keywords    by  var by  using() statement by  readonly by  as by  as / is by  as / is (improved) by  default by  global:: by  using() blocks by  volatile by  extern alias by    Attributes    by   by   by   and  by   by   by   by    Syntax    (coalesce nulls) operator by  Number flaggings by  where T:new by  Implicit generics by  One-parameter lambdas by  Auto properties by  Namespace aliases by  Verbatim string literals with @ by  enum values by  @variablenames by  event operators by  Format string brackets by  Property accessor accessibility modifiers by  Conditional (ternary) operator (?:) by  checked and unchecked operators by  implicit and explicit operators by    Language Features   Nullable types by  Anonymous types by  __makeref __reftype __refvalue by  Object initializers by  Format strings by  Extension Methods by  partial methods by  Preprocessor directives by  DEBUG pre-processor directive by  Operator overloading by  Type inferrence by  Boolean operators  by  Pass value-type variable as interface without boxing by  Programmatically determine declared variable type by  Static Constructors by  Easier-on-the-eyes / condensed ORM-mapping using LINQ by  __arglist by    Visual Studio Features   Select block of text in editor by  Snippets by      Framework   TransactionScope by  DependantTransaction by  Nullable&lt;T&gt; by  Mutex by  System.IO.Path by  WeakReference by    Methods and Properties   String.IsNullOrEmpty() method by  List.ForEach() method by  BeginInvoke(), EndInvoke() methods by  Nullable&lt;T&gt;.HasValue and Nullable&lt;T&gt;.Value properties by  GetValueOrDefault method by    Tips &amp; Tricks   Nice method for event handlers by  Uppercase comparisons by  Access anonymous types without reflection by  A quick way to lazily instantiate collection properties by  JavaScript-like anonymous inline-functions by    Other   netmodules by     by     by How secure is Activation Lock on iOS 7 (and later)? How do you compute negative numbers to fractional powers? My teachers have gone over rules for dealing with fractional exponents. I was just wondering how someone would compute say: $$(-5)^{2/3}$$ I have tried a couple ways to simplify this and I am not sure if the number stays negative or turns into a positive. I know that if a negative number is raised to an odd power it is negative, but fractional powers are neither odd or even. Is there a general rule for dealing with these types of problems? James Paterson in his novel writes, “she was shrink by trade, a forensic profiler, and Jack Morgan’s number two at Private “.   What does whole sentence mean? I need to make a small correction in a video I uploaded to YouTube. Googling shows that this is not possible. However, I remember seeing it done before. I posted a comment on a video saying that a certain part of the video was missing. I got a reply back that it was fixed, and when I went to see the video again, it was changed. How was this done? Standard deviation of binned observations I have a dataset of sample observations, stored as counts within range bins. e.g.:  min/max  count 40/44    1 45/49    2 50/54    3 55/59    4 70/74    1   Now, finding an estimate of the average from this is pretty straight forward.  Simply use the mean (or median) of each range bin as the observation and the count as a weight and find the weighted average:  $$\bar{x}^* = \frac{1}{\sum_{i=1}^N w_i} \sum_{i=1}^N w_ix_i$$  For my test case, this gives me 53.82.  My question now is, what's the correct method of finding the standard deviation (or variance)?  Through my searching, I've found several answers, but I'm unsure which, if any, is actually appropriate for my dataset.  I was able to find the following formula both  and .  $$s^{2*} = \frac{ \sum_{i=1}^N w_i (x_i - \bar{x}^*)^2 }{ \frac{(M-1)}{M} \sum_{i=1}^N w_i }$$  Which gives a standard deviation of 8.35 for my test case.  However, the Wikipedia article on  gives both the formula:  $$s^{2*} = \frac{ \sum_{i=1}^N w_i}{(\sum_{i=1}^N w_i)^2 - \sum_{i=1}^N w_i^2} \sum_{i=1}^N w_i(x_i-\bar{x}^*)^2$$  and  $$s^{2*} = \frac{1}{(\sum_{i=1}^N w_i) - 1} \sum_{i=1}^N w_i(x_i-\bar{x}^*)^2$$  Which give standard deviations of 8.66 and 7.83, respectively, for my test case.  Update  Thanks to @whuber who suggested looking into Sheppard's Corrections, and your helpful comments related to them.  Unfortunately, I'm having a difficult time understanding the resources I can find about it (and I can't find any good examples).  To recap though, I understand that the following is a biased estimate of variance:  $$s^{2*} = \frac{1}{\sum_{i=1}^N w_i} \sum_{i=1}^N w_i(x_i-\bar{x}^*)^2$$  I also understand that most standard corrections for the bias are for direct random samples of a normal distribution.  Therefore, I see two potential issues for me:   These are binned random samples (which, I'm pretty sure, is where Sheppard's Corrections come in.)  It's unknown whether or not the data is for a normal distribution (thus I'm assuming not, which, I'm pretty sure, invalidates Sheppard's Corrections.)   So, my updated question is; What's the appropriate method for handling the bias imposed by the "simple" weighted standard deviation/variance formula on a non-normal distribution? Most specifically with regards to binned data.  Note: I'm using the following terms:     $s^{2*}$ is the weighted variance   $N$ is the number of observations.  (i.e. the number of bins) $M$ is the number of nonzero weights.  (i.e. the number of bins with counts) $w_i$ are the weights  (i.e. the counts) $x_i$ are the observations.  (i.e. the bin means) $\bar{x}^*$ is the weighted mean. Open Attachment on Create of Child Record Are all eigenvectors, of any matrix, always orthogonal? Why do the planets' orbital distances fall on an exponential curve? Background: I was recently reading a book on the planets to my son and I noticed a pattern in the distributions of the planets.  The planets' distances roughly follow an exponential distribution.  Below is a plot of scaled, log orbital distances $$ \tilde{d_n} = \frac{\log(d_n/d_1)}{\log(d_2/d_1)} $$ with the line $an+b$:   Where $d_1$ corresponds to Mercury and so on. Ceres is included, Pluto is excluded.  By linear regression, $a = 0.90, b = -1.06$.  For the statistically minded, the data has a Pearson's correlation of 0.996.  Note that this is a well known phenomenon, see  and references.  The code used to generate the plot may be provided on request.  Question: What is the mechanism that leads to this distribution?  Aside: Is there a good introductory text on solar system formation for the mathematically inclined?  Update: This is also known as Titius–Bode law. Should I always use a comma after "e.g." or "i.e."? It seems that "e.g." is always followed by a comma but "i.e." is not. Why is that? Unreasonable RAM usage in Windows 7 I have a fresh install of Windows 7, and my RAM in normal startup goes up to 2.5GB. I looked at Task Manager, and there's at least 1.5GB missing from there and in Resource Monitor as well. There's no indication of what's using that RAM. Can someone tell me how I can find out what's consuming my memory? I believe it's a virus, but none of the free antivirus programs tracked it down.   I added the pictures below. If this is normal usage of Windows 7 as some answers imply, then I don't get this at all.   P.S. My Windows 8 Installation was running below 2.5GB, actually it was 1. something, until recently that I transferred some files from another computer which had the same problem that mine has now. I deleted Windows 8 and installed Windows 7, since I would do that anyway, and now I'm getting high memory usage in Windows 7 as well.   (Click images to enlarge) Does the Google spider render JavaScript? How can I detect when an Exception has been thrown anywhere in my application?  I'm try to auto-magically send myself an email whenever an exception is thrown anywhere in my Java Desktop Application.  I figure this way I can be more proactive.  I know I could just explicitly log and notify myself whenever an exception occurs, but I'd have to do it everywhere and I might(more likely will) miss a couple.  Any suggestions? How can I show that the order of an element modulo $n$ divides $\phi(n)$?  I know that if $a$ and $n$ are relatively prime, then the least positive integer $x$ such that $a^x\equiv1\pmod n$ is its order modulo $n$. I also know that, by Euler's theorem, $a^{\phi(n)}\equiv1\pmod n$. Therefore, it must be the case that $x\leq\phi(n)$.  However, all that I am left to do is to show that $kx=\phi(n)$, for some integer $k$. Do you guys have an idea on how to do this? Thanks in advance! How can I fix the non-stitched seam that is present after applying mirror modifier? Why does the Cauchy distribution have no mean? I created a view to show Users. These users can create nodes of the "Questions" content type.  The view has to render a table to show how many (the total number) Questions the user has created. Something like:  User +++ Questions created John --- 10 Ted  --- 4 Alf  --- 19