[r-t] Change Proposal to CC Decisions

[drichards1087 at aol.com]

Richard wrote:
>| Peals of Minimus, Doubles, Minor, Triples etc shall be
>| rung on four, five, six, seven etc bells respectively, or
>| on five, six, seven, eight etc bells with the tenor as
>| cover, and shall consist of at least 5000 [or whatever]
>| changes including every possible row either n or n+1
>| times.

Only problem I can see with this wording is the 'n or n+1' bit.
Peals of minor (and below), particularly, would fall out of this 
category everytime, with needing every possible row 7n times under 
current rules, or 6n and some 6n+1 if reduced to 5000 changes. Surely 
this phrasing needs to allow for multiple extent blocks? (e.g. Every 
possible row either xn or xn+1 times, where n is the stage and x is an 
integer)?

I would also like to voice my disagreements to the proposed reducing 
the number to 5000.
While 5000 may seem like a 'nice, round number', this is simply because 
we use an everday number system based on tens. This is why metric 
systems work so well. Imperial units use numbers plucked out of thin 
air (12, 16 etc) that have no logical significance to the number system 
they are to be used for, hence, surely 5000 is a better number to have 
than 5040?
Well the answer has to be no!
Using the same argument as above, we need to look at the 'number 
system' used in ringing. As we all know, this is a system of 
factorials. Therefore, 7! (ie 5040) is a perfectly logical number to 
choose, as it is a key number in our number system and is of a 
manageble but challenging length.
The benfits are, of course, that on lower stages a peal would be built 
up of a whole number of extents, and on higher stages, that 5040 would 
be an exact fraction of the extent on that number. Im not suggesting 
that we now change the higher stages number to 5040, but this number 
does have a siginificance in ringing; whereas 5000 is the number simply 
plucked out of thin air, probably, if I may say so, out of some clearly 
misguided idea that '5000 is a nicer round number'. There appears to be 
no mathematical logic or sense to having the peal length at 5000, once 
we consider that ringing uses not a metric, but a factorial number 
system! surely if we 'count' in a ringing sense, our number line would 
proceed: 1, 2, 6, 24, 120, 720, 5040, 40320,......... so 5040 clearly 
has a significance to the mathematical bedrock of ringing itself, 
whereas 5000 appears nowhere in 'the ringers numberline'!

Regards,
David

P.S. this is the first time that I have posted on the mailing list, so 
if this is not the correct address to post to, apologies in advance!!
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