I also cannot believe that a ≥10k rep user does not even understand that "1+2+3+... = something finite" is just pure bogus nonsense. Is that post supposed to make me believe anything about the correlation between rep and mathematical competency? Or was it posted as an attention grabber? Rep earner? +20−12 > 0 after all. Basically, the motive is indecipherable.
@vitamind No, that should stay closed. Duplicates do not have to be in order of post date. Quality is the first criterion, and the 2013 question is terrible. In contrast, the 2014 question is much better.
@user21820 I guess the user was trying to point out that the notion of "$=$" in that expression doesn't respect order, but they didn't explicitly mention it. I think such questions have to be answered with a degree of completeness, which that answer missed.
@NikhilKumarSingh This is spammy stuff, the same question multiple number of times, possible from different accounts.
@TeresaLisbon The internet apparently supports an extreme laziness. Something is fetched up and (in most cases) believed. The reflection about what has been read/seen , making its own thoughts , is more and more often missing. This "equation" is the proof of this trend, I however do not understand why SO MANY people were victim. How could this become so popular ?
@user21820 If you see the rest of their profile, it's a terribly abnormal question. I wonder if two people are using the same account?
@Peter The only reason I can provide is that the equation bought a sense of wonder and creativity into mathematical sphere. As mathematicians, we like to operate in a fairly rigid schema, but the video sort of "freed" the shackles in terms of how we usually expect mathematics to operate. Note that such videos do not emphasise (as opposed to "mention") that what they say is wrong.
Let us also recall that in a society where math education is fairly starved of any kind of creativity and thought and often descends into rote formula and blind memorization, these kinds of videos do better than brilliant business because they serve the dual purpose of providing "higher" motivation and creativity to these children at the cost of correctness.
These videos served that purpose : to provide wonder, a hint of creativity, a pinch of LIFE and a sense of awe, that traditional teachers of mathematics could not provide, shackled by syllabi and their own narrow outlooks. That the same has backfired on MSE is something that cannot take away from this impact, unfortunately.
I didn't disagree with anything Teresa said except that I detest such videos even if they provide so-called wonder, because the damage is worse than any possible benefit.
But I can't speculate on whether mere wonder motivated the Math SE post, because there are other possible reasons.
Here are two (this one and this one) algebra pre-calculus questions I have answered where the author has shown their working, which should be sufficient context.
I edited both of these posts to better articulate what the authors were saying, but did not change the original intent of the question. Therefore, I would like to see these questions be reopened, but I am happy to discuss.
@JoeI don't know about the first one and I will express my reservations, but I could possibly reopen the second one. But I really do not like to see something on that post, which a user that claims that there is no quality control on the behaviour of MSE reviewers, whose comment has been heavily up voted. It's getting to the point where I want to flag these comments.
It doesn't help that I have conversed with this user multiple times, and everytime it's just the "I agree to disagree" viewpoint. It is impossible to hit a consensus when users like this skew votes by berating those people that do the job of deciding which questions are to be on site. Instead of asking why such questions get downvotes, they blatantly decide that such reviewers are not worth any time, and buy votes and appreciation by making one-sided comments about various things.
This kind of behaviour is not healthy for any post.
I mean, agreeing to disagree before a conversation has even started is now the new fashionable phrase for "I'm not going to listen to you" and I'm going to buy brownie points by berating your opinions publicly. This is a joke. When we are trying so hard to repair the relationship between ourselves and the public, comments like this just serve to widen the rift.
@Joe Sorry for the digression, but let me start with the first question. So I tried looking for suitable duplicates, I'm not sure that any would be satisfactory for OP's purpose anyway. There also might be a language issue. This all hinges on the question of that one line , asking for expression in a similar form, good enough as context? I don't know, the question has been reopened so I'm not going to comment. I feel like it's not enough, and I would have asked for a source to improve things.
@Joe Talking about your second question now. The author is not convinced by an explanation provided in a candidate duplicate answer. Enough effort was shown, and I want to reopen, but this is stopping me : I know that there are billions of different ways to ask the same question (ref. TM's comment) so I'm still worried that there is a duplicate for this that could be used. I know that people have their own ways of looking at things and so questions aren't "true" duplicates in the sense that...
... different explanations work for different people. But don't we already have such explanations here? I don't know, I just wonder. I'm voting to reopen purely on the basis of the fact that the effort there is enough (examples taken) but I would not be surprised if it is closed, for the reason that any answer to it is probably a rehash of a previous answer. I cannot help but feel that OP is missing their teacher, with whom they'd have discussed this in private.
@TeresaLisbon: To me, putting the quadratic in a different form demonstrates that the OP has thought about the question, and indicates what they are familiar with (putting quadratics the form $a(x+b)^2+c$) and what they are not familiar with (putting quadratics in the form $(ax+b)^2+c$). It makes me feel like I'm not just doing someone's homework for them.
For very elementary questions like these, I think they are too often marked as duplicates because the OP is unlikely to be able to see how one question is essentially the same as another in an abstract sense.
I think this applies to the second question too. Moreover, the proposed duplicate by Toby Mak uses radians rather than degrees, and the answers use unfamiliar terminology (even writing "$x\in\Bbb{R}$" rather than "$x$ is a real number" could be a stumbling block at that level, I think).
Anyway, I see you've voted to reopen the second question. Thanks for taking the time to discuss this with me.
@Joe Yes, this sentence I agree with. But I only wonder if this kind of reasoning occasionally over extends. Anyway, it just means that such stuff is up for debate, and we should debate. Having said that, if comments like the one I spoke of earlier appear underneath posts, it is not going to help the situation.
@TeresaLisbon: I agree that comments like that unhelpfully stereotype MSE reviewers, many of whom take a lot of time to improve the quality of this site. Although I do not agree with every decision reached in this chat room, I do think it has a positive impact.
@Joe It's very unhelpful, dear Joe. I cannot stomach it, because I spoke to the user and furthered my (and therefore a few others' on this room) point of view to them. I would be happy if they accept it and move on. Instead, it's the same buying of sympathy and polarization that I've seen at least on a couple of occasions. I cannot handle this again.
I'm happy to be conversing and changing my point of view vis-a-vis topics on the site. That comment stops nothing short of a lack of acceptance of another point of view.
I agree with the comment of Toby Mak there: the second question is asked millions of times and there is little added value. It is saying that $-1=1$ since $(-1)^2=(1)^2$
@ArcticChar: Perhaps we should close it as a duplicate for future readers (even though I don't think that the duplicate would help the OP himself, for the reasons discussed above). I don't think we should delete it because duplicates can help improve search on MSE (and even if they don't, I'm not sure there's any harm in having them lying around). What do you think?
@SamyakMarathe We have wanted more participation in this room. If you think there is something unbalanced about this room , then feel free to participate here. You will hopefully, slowly understand what goes on in this room, and what benefit it serves.
This is confusing My head tells me to look for a duplicate, my gut tells me this OP won't be satisfied with alternate explanations, and this is an XY issue that will drag on beyond duplicates. I want to vote to close for lack of clarity, because the OP asks "what is the sine function?" somewhere, and now this is just a bit on the edge.
@TeresaLisbon I wonder how the user can be given such an exercise if he/she does not know what the sine function is. Or is it just curiousity from something he/she never heard ?
@Peter I know, it's quite funny. Or maybe the OP doesn't know the sine function even though it's already been explained in their class. Anyway, cannot speculate too much,if a good dupe target is available then duplicate it is!
@Peter Fascinating. It will be required to come up with nice bounds for the number of solutions, but I assume these bounds will be too much to ask for!
This room is now seven years old. Originally it was called Jury Duty (and you can probably find a few mentions of this room name on meta), the room description was changed a few times since then.
What is the appropriate course of action for this question? The asker has made subsequent edits to their original post to add more questions. While the questions are related in terms of mathematical content, I’ve told the OP that this behavior is frowned upon.
In addition, all the questions are isolated and without effort or context given.
@Joe ← For what it's worth, I'm fine with the first question, for this specific reason you gave. I have reservations about the second one, but it's too subjective so never mind about my opinion.
Does anyone have any thoughts on this question? On the one hand, it is somewhat lacking in context; on the other hand, the OP explicitly asks for a hint, and so it doesn't look like they are simply looking for someone to do their homework for them.
@Joe Just close as duplicate? For the one I linked in the post, half of the answers are hints. Since the OP did not specify what they want, I suppose that post is good enough.
@SamyakMarathe No. It is often deleted by the math.se sponsored review queues in which users across the site can vote on whether to close, reopen, judge suggested edits, evaluate first posts, like the one you posted today. etc.
