>>I guess I'm the sort of low-intelligence person who is easier fascinated
>>by simple visual tricks like this. I also enjoy watching fire, and I
>>used to sit and watch the washing machine. Sometimes I sit and watch
>>rain, or river turbulence... I guess I'm just stupid.
>
> When I worked offshore a lot of us indulged in wave counting.

If you're designing some offshore structure then you need to be able to 
estimate the loadings from the sea.  How do you do this?  Well you watch the 
waves for a long time and come up with a statistical model.

We did something like this in our "non-linear dynamics" course at 
university.  Basically you take the statistical model of sea motion, and use 
it to design the structure based on some criteria (eg 1% chance of breaking 
within 10 years).

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