• Gordon Calhoun
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      3920 days ago

      Ugh, 3 factorial is most definitely not equal to π. It’s something more like, idk, 9? Honestly I don’t even know how I got here; I majored in Latin and barely past

        • @[email protected]
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          320 days ago

          Seriously, if you’re working with analog electronics, 𝛑=√1̅0̅ is close enough. If you need more precision, use active error correction, and in the 21st century that’s easiest to do digitally anyway.

        • Gordon Calhoun
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          1020 days ago

          e = π = σ = ε = µ = Avogadro’s Number = k = g = G = α = i = j = 3

          (at least that’s how they all look when viewed from ∞)

          • @[email protected]
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            20 days ago

            Shouldn’t have i in there, or j if you’re using that to represent the imaginary number. The complex plane is separate.

            Let epsilon be substantially greater than zero…

            • Gordon Calhoun
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              120 days ago

              The list of things I shouldn’t do, but do regardless, stretches past infinity.

              • @[email protected]
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                20 days ago

                Imaginary numbers are best understood as symbolizing rotation. If we’re imagining a number line here, “looking back from infinity” - at a scale where Grahams number looks like the mass of an atom expressed in kilograms, i would not be in that infinite set of numbers, it would be a point above that line and creating a perpendicular plane to it.

                I hate the term “imaginary” because it’s misleading. Most high school algebra teachers don’t understand what they are either, so people learn about these things called “imaginary” numbers, never learn any applications with them, hopefully graph them at best, and then move on understanding nothing new about math.

                Students also tend to get really confused about it as possibly a variable, (it’s really annoying with in second year algebra courses, where e and logs also show up). We say “ah yeah, if you get a negative sign, just pull it out as an i and don’t worry about it. or just say no real solutions.”

                  • @[email protected]
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                    220 days ago

                    Feynman has so much great stuff to plagiarize.

                    I think in precalculus at least, something like this is not too hard to show and explain to a student. This would be a fine “final” thing to end the typical high school math career on - showing how all of the different concepts you’ve explored come together.

          • @[email protected]
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            20 days ago

            My high school English teacher still has night terrors about me starting sentences with conjunctions. And that was the least of their problems.

            Edit: kind of unrelated, but that song about conjunctions is now stuck in my head. 🎶Conjunction junction, what’s your function? 🎶

          • @[email protected]
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            120 days ago

            Erm. In what world do you live that the precedent in your expression is right?

            In all languages and countries I know multiplication binds more strongly than addition. So what you wrote would be

            n^2 - n - 2n - 3n…