« first day (4217 days earlier)      last day (1100 days later) » 
00:00 - 21:0021:00 - 00:00

00:06
well, that was exciting
where was exciting?
i was being facetious
I'm trying to prove that a function is even
well actually that it's symmetric about a vertical line
 
2 hours later…
02:18
main website is down.
something happen?
Probably the site is down for maintenance.
02:37
i saw it in 'read only' mode, but not down, when i checked 20 min ago.
Doesn’t seem down, but no new questions.
so yeah maybe maintenance and not the usual ddos crazies.
The site’s back now.
03:08
Hey @TedShifrin, @leslietownes, @copper.hat, and @PM2Ring -- first off, thanks a lot to all of you for spending almost two hours (I think) trying to help me fix my problem.
Turns out it all came down to a minus sign:
2
Q: Collision of Ball in Triangle

rb3652A ball with position and velocity $(P_0,V_0)$ is in a triangle. Which side of the triangle it will hit? Calculations: The ball's motion is $$L( t) = P_0+t*V_0 = \ ( V_{0_{x}} t+P_{0_{x}} ,V_{0_{y}} t+P_{0_{y}}) \tag{1}$$ The sides of the triangle are given by $A_1x+B_1y=C_1$, and we can represen...

hah. you tricked someone into actually reading the equations.
well done. :)
What are p-adic numbers?
ive been reading on wikipedia for like an hour and I don't get it...
subtle stuff. textbooks probably a better resource than wikipedia, which isn't all that great for real numbers.
are you familiar with any construction of real numbers? it might help to start there.
the stuff with formal series i'm seeing on wikipedia is confusing. it's just "here are these crrrrazy numbers!" kinda like looking at real numbers from the point of view of decimal expansion. suddenly there's all this work to do, and infinite sequences, when the concept is simpler than that but also subtler than that.
you would want to do the construction of R from Q as the completion of a metric space. not the order theoretic route.
03:41
@leslietownes Question for now. Rest assured that this is not from the contest as it will start at 12:00, UTC+8. When simplifying $a \bmod c$ where $c$ is composite, how should CRT come into play?
i dunno what you mean by 'simplifying' a mod c. the CRT relates the value of a mod c to the values of a mod c_k where c_k are pairwise coprime factors of c.
or at least some version of CRT does that. i think there are a family of results called the 'CRT.'
i'm probably going to be sued in florida just for saying this much
I mean, something like $1897 \bmod 48$.
I am referring to the Chinese Remainder Theorem. Sorry about that
if you wanted to find the n with 0 <= n < 48 with 1897 = n mod 48 i would just do it? it's division, no CRT necessary.
i understand. but i think there are a family of results, all referred to as 'the chinese remainder theorem.' i'm not seeing where you would use it here.
I am trying to solve problems of the form "last n digits of $x$"
And I found this problem, specifically problem 9.
if you just do division with remainder you see 1897 = 39*48 + 25. 25 is the "simplified" version of 1897 mod 48.
03:48
Find the last three digits of $2003^{2002^{2001}}$.
i would use euler's theorem for that. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler%27s_theorem that theorem. there have to be worked out examples.
i should warn you, i never did contest math, and the solutions i find may not be the ones that work 'quickly.'
Yes, I was typing that I should use Euler's theorem. Then, I should solve $2002^{2001} \bmod \varphi(1000)$
Let this value be $p$. Then, $2003^p \equiv 1 \bmod 1000$
i guess you can use CRT to work out what it is mod a power of 2 and then mod a power of 5.
once you know that, you know what it is mod 1000.
why anybody would want to do this, that's what i'm interested in. :)
03:51
Yes, that is what I am talking about. How can I use CRT here? Is it that I should factor out the modulus to its prime factors, then use CRT on that?
@soupless What's the answer?
I still don't know for now.
Anyway, the contest will be starting soon, I should go for now. Thank you very much!
@soupless All the best! :-)
Is a contest like a war?
04:09
if you want to win at all costs, then yes
The contest is from a particular group, which is affiliated to the school I am applying to. So yes
I keep in mind that failing to reach the national round = no scholarship
Win and you're in.
@TedShifrin So yes. I need to win the war, even if I lose the battle
04:23
Setting up 🍯 honey pots to catch cheaters is part of that "war"
I am waiting for the final proof of the Collatz conjecture by PenAndPaperMathematics.
Sort of feels like a giant cliffhanger.
don't hold your breath
The landscape of mathematics has many cliffs :-)
Always remember, we live for the climb.
And I am also waiting for the "An Infinite Sum Suitable for the Efficient Computation of Quotients" by AMDG.
Aka, entrapment.
The JEE has been doing it for years.
04:41
@robjohn If $f$ and $g$ are functions in $L^{2}(\mathbb{R})$, does $$\int_{-N}^{N} f(x)\frac{1}{\sqrt{2 \pi}}\int_{-\infty}^{\infty} \left( g(t) \boldsymbol{1}_{[-N,N]}(t) \right) e^{-ixt} \, \mathrm dt \, \mathrm dx $$ converge to $\int_{\mathbb{R}} f(x) \hat{g}(x) \, \mathrm dx $ as $N \to \infty$? That would seem to provide a way to justify switching the order of integration.
 
1 hour later…
05:43
@rb3652 ouch, live and learn
05:55
@rb3652 i added a non answer to your question illustrating how it can be done using inner & cross product.
 
4 hours later…
09:57
Any hint on how to prove the following integral equality? I'm getting lost because it seems to me that we are mixing some Cauchy integral formula with some Fourier Series but I've never seen anything similar in class
I can just "copy" the proof that the coefficient of a Fourier series are in that form and adapt it to Homogeneus Expansion for holomorphic function?
I can use the classic Cauchy-inequality to prove the theorem but I would like to understand from where that integral cames up
I want to prove that there exist sequence $x_n<k$ such that $x_n>k$ as n approach infinity x_n and k are real numbers and n is positive integer
Hey
is anyone there ?
I have a stupid question to ask
helloooooo
10:13
@user123456789 Just ask; don't ask to ask
There is something I am missing here and I cant figure out what
the "from this" we can say it's just false
you can't assume that from what you have wrote
that thing is 0 because a=sqrt(b) but you already know that, it's literally your first line
Oooooooo
so in cases like this at least one of them is zero.
I don't know how to explain but when should we be concerned about more than 1 anwers ?
10:28
in that case you can have more than 1 answers only if sqrt(b)=-sqrt(b) as you wrote hence b=0
Friends lie, Girlfriends lie, Algebra does not
you wrote it yourself
X^12 = 49^(1/124)
Would this have 1 solution or more than 1 solutions ?
91
Q: Why can't you square both sides of an equation?

JeffWhy can't you square both sides of an equation? I've been asked this many times and can never quite give a good, clear, concise answer (for beginning algebra students) in plain language. I just searched the web and still couldn't find a simple-to-understand answer for why squaring both sides giv...

@user123456789 Two solutions...
How do you know ?
Why is limit point of circle not outside circle. Intutively it makes sense but how I prove it? Is there a proof?
@user123456789 (I am assuming you meant real solution)By solving... $x^{12}=7$ Take square roots then eliminate one equation then again take square root.
10:43
or may be say why limit point of set S=(0,1] is not 2?
10:53
It seems I got a bit vague definition from text.
My text says x is limit point of S if there exist sequence x_n such that x_n approach x as n approach infinity
x_n is element of S except x
sorry it seems that I can solve it I am being too vague
It's gonna contradict the definition of limit
@TedShifrin I meant it more as... do they hold the same amount of importance, kind of. It's an informal question.
@Wolgwang How do you know that it has 2 solutions just by looking ?
11:12
can someone point me towards the solution to 5^x - 2^x = 117 utilizing modular arithmetic? it's clearly x=3 but I want to get the answer without inspection.
I got to $125(5^{x-3}-1)=8(2^{x-3}-1)$, which tells me $2^{x-3}-1$ is a multiple of 125, so $x-3=100k$ for some integer k as $\text{ord}_{125}(2)=100$. similarly for the other side, $x-3=2m$ for some integer m. I don't know where to proceed from here
11:31
Actually, I'll ask on the main site
@user123456789 have you read through the answers in the posted question?
1 hour ago, by Wolgwang
91
Q: Why can't you square both sides of an equation?

JeffWhy can't you square both sides of an equation? I've been asked this many times and can never quite give a good, clear, concise answer (for beginning algebra students) in plain language. I just searched the web and still couldn't find a simple-to-understand answer for why squaring both sides giv...

You know it has two solutions because if two numbers have the same sign their product is positive.
12:11
@leslietownes I didn't get to use CRT at all.
12:35
@soupless Here in Arizona, they are trying to make CRT illegal.
3=3 ⇒ 3^2 = 3^2 ⇒ 3^2-3^2 = 0 ⇒ (3+3)(3-3) = 0 ⇒ 3+3 = 0 ⇒ 3 = -3 ???
No.
If $a,b\in\mathbb{R}$ and $ab = 0$, then either $a=0$ or $b=0$. It is possible that only one is zero.
@XanderHenderson Isn't the problem division by zero?
12:50
Not really, no.
You could, I suppose argue that the problem is a cancelation by zero. But then the appropriate response is that $ac = bc$ if and only $a=b$ and $c\ne 0$.
But I guess that a lot of students are taught that if $a=b$, then you can divide both sides of the equation by the same thing. This is generally the effect of cancelation, though I would argue that the actual property is a bit more subtle.
Shouldn't that be $ac = bc$ if and only if $a=b$ or $c=0$?
So $ac=bc$ if and only $a=b$ and $c≠0$ is a true statement?
@XanderHenderson Cathode-ray tubes?
@PM2Ring Not if you want an iff statement.
I could clean it up a little, I suppose.
I have implied parentheses: $ac = bc$ if and only if ($a=b$ or $c=0$)
12:59
Yes, I know.
But that doesn't capture the idea of "dividing both sides". That captures the idea of multiplying both sides.
What about $ac = bc$ iff $a = b$
c is not equal to 0
because 0 times any number is 0
Like $a=b$ does imply that $ac=bc$ . But $ac=bc$ doesn't imply $a=b$
In any event, my original statement was the most relevant: $ab = 0$ implies that $a=0$ or $b=0$.
There are a zillion questions on SO where the code doesn't behave as expected because the OP hasn't applied De Morgan's laws properly.
13:02
aka the zero product property
@XanderHenderson Most certainly.
@XanderHenderson Is there another example where division by zero is not the main problem?
Division is multiplication by the reciprocal.
Again, I don't think that division by zero is really the problem here. You aren't really dividing by zero. You are attempting to apply the law of multiplicative cancelation in a situation where it doesn't apply.
@user85795 Multiplicative inverse.
13:06
Yes.
0 has no multiplicative inverse
It might be best to state the "rule" as "If ($ac = bc$ and $c\ne 0$), then $a=b$."
👍🏼
As I said above, this amounts to more or less the same thing as "dividing both sides by $c$" (or multiplying by $1/c$), but I think that there is a distinction here which is relevant in more general settings, e.g. rings with zero divisors.
Not the reals.
Quoting the original poster:
> I've been asked this many times and can never quite give a good, clear, concise answer (for beginning algebra students) in plain language. I just searched the web and still couldn't find a simple-to-understand answer for why
are they ready for a more general setting :P
Eg, $1\cdot 5 \equiv 3\cdot 5 \pmod{10}$ but $1 \not\equiv 3 \pmod{10}$
13:19
@PM2Ring Right, which was why I originally specified that if $a,b\in\mathbb{R}$ and $ab=0$, the either $a=0$ or $b=0$.
It is a theorem about the reals (or, more generally, rings without zero divisors).
Ditto multiplicative cancelation. If $ac = bc$ and $c$ is not a zero divisor (or some similar hypothesis), then $a=b$.
Understood
@XanderHenderson In the standard axiom of reals, there is no division ?
Just multiplicative inverse?
and additive inverse
I don't know what is "standard"---there are many ways axiomatizing the reals---but, generally speaking, we don't define "division", except by way of multiplication by an inverse.
@XanderHenderson Oh ok.
13:33
has your confusion been cleared up?
55 mins ago, by Prithu biswas
3=3 ⇒ 3^2 = 3^2 ⇒ 3^2-3^2 = 0 ⇒ (3+3)(3-3) = 0 ⇒ 3+3 = 0 ⇒ 3 = -3 ???
coolio 😎
13:59
@XanderHenderson I just want to comment that for ℝ specifically, at the beginner level, it seems best to understand all equation manipulation as doing the same thing to both sides as far as possible. This includes dividing by non-zero reals, and the above error is forbidden because we simply are not allowed to divide by zero (it is simply not a defined operation so you cannot do it to both sides).
This viewpoint is supported by the fact that even at a foundational level ℝ is constructed either by Cauchy sequences or Dedekind cuts from the field ℚ, and it is again crucial that we have division by non-zero in ℚ.
However, you are of course correct that once we move to non-fields such as division rings, then we need to realize that although the field axioms do not hold (and hence division by non-zero may not be a supported operation), the ring may still support cancellation of non-zero factor.
If we don't define "division", except by way of multiplication by an inverse, then we don't need to worry about division by zero. You can't multiply by the inverse of zero because it doesn't exist. ;)
So I would say that there is nothing wrong if a student identifies the error (for real a,b) in ( a^2 = b^2 ⊢ a = b ) as due to a division by something that may be zero, even though in practice every student who actually gets to that step via ( a^2 = b^2 ⊢ (a+b)·(a−b) = 0 ) will not make that mistake intentionally precisely because it is clear that they cannot divide by (a−b) unless they know it is nonzero.
@PM2Ring Of course, nobody disagrees with that, but you must remember what level you are teaching at. Everyone who learns abstract algebra is taught that division is just multiplication by inverse. But for ℝ specifically, at a level below abstract algebra, students know division and actually the cancellation property is at a higher level than necessary for ensuring correct understanding.
Formally, cancellation is ∀a,b,c∈ℝ ( a·c = b·c ∧ c ≠ 0 ⇒ a = b ). Right? But that's not in the same form as the "do the same thing to two equal things and you get two equal things", which is a simpler and sufficient principle for ℝ.
You can also imagine teaching a very young child. Dividing a cake by 2 is not quite the same as multiplying a cake by the inverse of 2.
14:15
@user21820 Sure. If a student in a precalc or calculus class were to day "we can't divide by zero", I would not tell them that they are wrong.
But I think that the issue is, in fact, somewhat more subtle.
And I think that students in a calculus or precalculus class are sufficiently mathematically mature to deal with some subtlety.
@XanderHenderson Haha well, if they make that kind of mistake and cannot understand their mistake, then I wouldn't go anywhere else until they can get it solidly down that they can only claim two things are equal if they can justify it, and that they cannot just move things over the equal sign, which is a very common pedagogical bogosity.
@user21820 Fair enough. OTOH, when we learn division, we're also taught that you aren't allowed to divide by zero. But at that stage we might not have a solid understanding of why we can't divide by zero.
@user21820 Exactly.
@PM2Ring Ah, that needs to be taught (well). There's a reason why in many countries the standard education syllabus puts fractions in a year by itself after multiplication. =)
Agreed.
14:23
@XanderHenderson So yup I think we agree. I just wanted to emphasize that we can do a lot of rigorous mathematics even at elementary school level without touching logically complicated notions like cancellation (which would seem like magic if the foundations are lacking). Something like 16/64 = 1/4 by cancellation. =D
This wasn't an issue for the ancient Greeks, because they didn't have zero. Or algebra. ;)
@PM2Ring LOL.
That's the Romans.
@PM2Ring Greeks have χ.
=P
But their alphabet that corresponds to our x is ξ, which in my subjective opinion is a really ugly letter.
14:29
Greek numerals were more painful. They used the whole alphabet, including a couple of extra obscure letters. So you had 9 letters for 1 to 9, another 9 letters for 10 to 90, and another 9 letters for 100 to 900. I can't remember how they did bigger numbers, but Archimedes came up with an exponential notation scheme in The Sand Reckoner.
@PM2Ring One would guess that any mathematician would come up with exponential notation sooner or later.
As long as they lived long enough. =P
From a modern perspective, it's kind of surprising how long it took for negative numbers to be accepted as legitimate. Sure, they got used in algebra, but they were seen as a bookkeeping device or computational trick, not as proper numbers. Somewhat ironically, it wasn't until complex numbers were accepted as valid mathematical entities that negatives became grudgingly accepted. Even by the time of Euler, negatives were still a bit suss.
OTOH, multiplicative inverses have been accepted & studied for a long time.
14:45
@PM2Ring Yes I also do not understand it. I believe I would accept it immediately based on geometrical motivations, since position on a line clearly has a direct symmetry across a given reference point. But it's hard to tell whether there was social or political suppression of the idea of negative numbers. If everyone around us (imply that they) despise negative numbers, would we go against that publicly?
One could argue that water can be divided but cannot be negated, but I believe the geometric position on a line makes it untenable not to accept negative numbers.
However! There is an interesting modern mathematical point that may be worth mentioning, which is that we can get to ℝ in two somewhat distinct ways! The first is ℕ → ℤ → ℚ → ℝ. The second is ℕ → ℚ+ → ℝ+ → ℝ. Funnily enough, the second way avoids negation all the way until we are literally at the end... And when you really look at the actual technical constructions involved in both ways, you will find both benefits and drawbacks of each way due to the choice of when to introduce negation!
@user21820 It seems obvious to us, because we're used to it. But it was a huge conceptual leap to unite magnitude and direction into a single entity.
On a related note, people were doing computations with complex numbers for several centuries before the geometrical interpretation of the Argand plane was devised.
@PM2Ring That's another funny thing. I would have thought that somebody cared enough to use the ancient euclidean geometry to find a representative of their complex numbers.
But again this is hindsight, as you said.
Negative numbers are a tough sell to very young learners.
They don't know about debt.
Temperature 🌡️ is a good motivator.
Except you can't talk about "what is twice as cold as 0°?
15:07
Yeah. Zero degrees is a fake zero, unless you're using an absolute temperature scale, like Kelvin.
John Baez briefly mentions that in Torsors Made Easy
👍🏼 even 0 as a number meaning "nothing" can be problematic.
@user85795 What about position as per my geometric motivation? No need for a continuous line; even just seating in a line. +1 means move to the right 1 seat. +2 means move to the right 2 seats. What about not moving? What about moving to the left?
The seating motivation also supports multiplication as an action (but you don't tell students that). 2 × +1 is repeating +1 twice.
I actually say much more about this here:
11
A: What makes negative numbers different from positive numbers other than their being (almost) opposite?

user21820None of the answers so far has addressed the underlying question, which is why it seems that multiplication is asymmetric and satisfies "positive times positive is positive" while "negative times negative is positive". The reason is that multiplication is not as simple as it seems. $\def\nn{\math...

Under Viewpoint 1.
The number line is a great motivator.
Turn the thermometer on its side :-)
+1
15:31
The problem here^ is kids hate subtraction already.
@user85795 Ahahaha... I personally read "−" as "minus" in all cases, and see no problem since to me "−n" is the same as "0−n" where "0" is the appropriate zero element of the appropriate ring.
But I also have no problem with people who want to distinguish the unary and binary "−".
 
1 hour later…
16:38
$$e^{\frac{1}{\ln(x)}}=\frac{1}{2\pi i}\int_{c-i\infty}^{c+i\infty}\frac{2K_1(2\sqrt{z})}{\sqrt{z}}x^{-z}~dz$$

Where $K$ is a modified Bessel function of the second kind.

Then letting $x=e^{-n^{-s}}$ we have:

$$\Phi(s)=\frac{1}{2\pi i}\int_{c-i\infty}^{c+i\infty}\frac{2K_1(2\sqrt{z})}{\sqrt{z}}\bigg(\sum_{n=1}^\infty e^{zn^{-s}}\bigg)~dz$$
Does anyone see the error here?
$0<x<1$
17:21
Are there general methods for graphing functions given by parametric form?
17:42
@user85795 That thread makes me sad. So much opinion, so little of which is truly relevant. :(
17:58
@unit1991 Computers love parametric form. They just plot lots of points. For curves like the cycloid there is no way to write them explicitly (globally). For curves in higher dimensions, it’s almost always hopeless.
@XanderHenderson I tend to use negative for the additive inverse and minus for the operation.
Hi @TedShifrin, just wanted to give a quick update: it all came down to a minus sign. And then everything worked flawlessly.
OK. Still hope you understood our geometric preference.
Yep. I saw @copper.hat's answer. Something I didn't think of (although I tried a similar approach).
18:19
what have I done?
also, I wrote a function for which I am not sure I know the name
fun interpolate(origin: Vector2d, target: Vector2d, factor: Double): Vector2d =
	origin + (target - origin) * factor
iirc it was something about interpolation, but not sure if it is called just that
if factor = 0, the result is origin
if factor = 1, the result is target
anywhere between 0 and 1, it shifts linearly from origin to target
is this just called "interpolate" or does it have a different name?
18:41
you can call it whatever you want. pretty common to have a family of things indexed by a parameter in [0,1], where at 0 you get one thing, and at 1 you get something else, and if you vary in the middle it moves continuously from one to the other.
“Homotopy,” “deformation,” …
sometimes people use 'interpolation' to mean more specialized or specific things but usually context makes it clear.
hmm... I guess I'll keep the name then
18:59
interpolopy
intertopyation?
@TedShifrin does that include the Homotopy of Notre Dame?
19:17
@robjohn I have a hunch not.
@TedShifrin Me, too. But it doesn't really matter, so long as one is clear and consistent.
The tone of so many of the answers is "If you don't say [x], you are wrong!"
this is the tone of the internet.
there oughta be a feature where you can automatically block seeing all questions with more than N answers. where N is something like 4.
@TedShifrin I had best to not use a quasimodal verb (nor split an infinitive)
minus and negative are both what happen to your net worth and your worth as a person if you don't invest in lesliecoin. maybe i should add an answer that explains this, with links to relevant resources.
@leslietownes No, no, sorry, amwhycoin is outperforming lesliecoin! ;P
19:30
Maybe I should switch to amWhycoin, as lesliecoin makes big promises but follows not through.
im still not entirely sure how I always end up with so many "1 - X" situations
wiet: it's a pretty good example of a function that is 1 at 0 and 0 at 1 and continuous in between. good for turning things on and off in a continuous way.
19:54
I think I'd prefer something like $\begin{cases}1,& x <0\\
e\exp\left( -\frac{1}{1 - x^2}\right), & x \in (0,1) \\
0, & \text{otherwise}
\end{cases}$ for that
i suspect crypto will go the way of dotcom, or dotgone as they say
@copper.hat Dotgonit!
:-)
found a convex psq, but don't want to deprive a learning experience :-(
20:12
What makes you think there might be a learning experience?
i need some glimmer of hope
@copper.hat Yeah, my first instinct is to answer the question to help, but then I have to change my thinking and realize that if they put little effort into the question, even though the question might be a good question, it is probably just a homework grab.
@robjohn you are right, but i hate to see folks in pain
not the case in the above situation
@copper.hat it might be pain or skating
@copper.hat I've been saying that for more than a decade.
20:16
I was proud of the success here last night!
Hasn't happened yet. :(
@TedShifrin are you referring to the comments?
Well, ultimately, the OP figured it all out correctly and posted the answer, as I suggested he do. To me, that is success.
yes, that is a success
It is.
20:19
No one jumped in with the answer too soon; no one closed the question because we were having learning in the comments. Rare!!
to me it is a success if the gain is $>1$
I see Deane Yang approved the thread.
i think much of what is missing in modern education is the narrative
Yes. Deane and I are old friends, however. :) He actually took a class from me when he was in grad school. :)
@leslietownes the linear formula is easy though... the sin wave formula was a bit more difficult, the offset sin wave formula is a pain... which is the one I posted above
20:20
Ah
We're also mathematical brothers (he was a student of Phil Griffiths, too — an official one).
Gotcha
my latest helpful comment: "To be honest, I give a crap what WA computes."
I agree.
Yes, but I want to know how it computed it
20:22
@SMCnotSvenMagnusCarlsen Does Lie lie?
Do Lie algebras lie?
a @Balarka: Isn't this citation from wiki totally inaccurate? When does Whitney ever make reference to a Riemannian metric?
the truth about Lie algebras, many folks hurt during push forward
@TedShifrin It's badly written. What wiki means is that first you can embed your compact Riemannian manifold $M$ of dimension m in R^2m, then scale it down so that its embedded in a very very very small ball in R^2m -- which means the embedding is short, $f^* g_{Euc} < g_M$ -- then approximate it by Nash-Kuiper h-principle by C^1-isometric embeddings.
One uses Whitney to produce a short map, afterwards Nash to approximate the short map by isometric ones.
Yes, that's the solution that was just posted. And I knew that. But the statement is horribly misleading.
Yeah, badly written
20:28
Worse than that.
No mention of "compact" either, which I did include above (paused for 1 second and put it in the hypothesis), and Deane Yang is just giving the answerer a hard time about that :)
Precision is important!
Speaking of imprecision, @copper, note that we didn't pay attention. $\int_\gamma \Re(f(z))\,dz$ is certainly not $\Re\left(\int_\gamma f(z)\,dz\right)$.
Yep, I already ate crow on that one
20:32
Was it cooked rare?
Not sure why crow gets such a bad rap
I do like corvids in general
Was it a raven rapping at your chamber door?
one for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy
Our analysts should relish this one.
I'm so Poe at analysis
20:36
Of course, someone just gave the OP an example. Grrrr.
i think the student i helped most in mathematics really had little to do with mathematics. he (like my son) had a 9th grade teacher whose approach to starting high school maths was a weeder class and he ruined maths for many, including my student. he saw how i approached a problem and made lots of mistakes until i got it right and i guess he figured if joe can do it so can i. he's on his way to becoming a mech e.
And now another one posts an answer. It's hopeless.
I worked with two twins long-distance while the AP calc teacher of one (female) was making her feel stupid (even with remarks in class, I gathered). All it took was a little fun and encouragement. They both ended up with As in their calculus courses.
hopefully i will not encounter the 9th g teacher in a dark alley :-)
@TedShifrin And it was wrong.
there may be some unbounded variation invlolved
20:40
As pointed out by OP :-)
Yeah, I went back and looked at the answer.
The person who gave it away in the comment did remove it. That was nice of him.
can someone re-post an answer, it's due in 20 minutes
thanks
This answer is hidden. This answer was deleted and converted to a comment 3 mins ago by Xander Henderson♦.
LOL
@XanderHenderson So you converted it to a comment, deleted it, and then deleted the comment?
I converted the answer.
Then saw the comment thread.
Then deleted a bunch.
20:51
And now I see that there was discussion here. :/
is $[n]$ usually taken to mean $\lfloor n \rfloor$?
it's iverson bracket notation. returns 1 if n is the one true number and 0 otherwise
seriously though i wouldn't think it is 'usually' taken to be anything
@copper.hat Often it does when people don't know the $\lfloor\dots\rfloor$ notation
i think i hate ambiguity, but am not sure now
Depends on context. In number theory, I think it is "usually" the integer part.
Or the gif.
20:55
@copper.hat I'm not decided.
$[n] = \{1, \cdots, n\}$
Depends on context. :D
i think i should go back to bed, gray matter is slower than usual
Go for it.
@copper.hat It's often the equivalence class of $n$ mod something.
I thought where you're from it's grey matter, @copper.
20:57
It is just a grouping symbol.
grey matter is greying matters.
Ahhh, those beautiful gray skies...
soon copper will be grey and blue.
I came up with a good tongue twister recently
Baron on a barren desert eating dessert on a baren
my spelling is all over the place since i communicate regularly with various branches of the language
20:58
What's a baren, a Balarka?
fortnight
How do you eat dessert on a baren?
its what they use for pressing woodcuts
I thought tongue-twisters had to have consonance with only one consonant.
Ah. Esoteric.
Baren (馬連、馬楝) listen is a disk-like hand tool with a flat bottom and a knotted handle used in Japanese woodblock printing. It is used to burnish (firmly rub) the back of a sheet of paper, lifting ink from the block. == Construction == A traditional (hon) baren is made of layers. A flat coil of braided cord forms the core. This is placed on a disk (ategawa) consisting of 30–40 sheets of high-grade long-fibred hosokawa paper, wrapped in tissue and black lacquer. This is covered by a thin bamboo sheath (takenokawa) twisted in such a manner as to form the handle on the top. According to Hiroshi...
Who knew...
20:59
red leather, yellow leather,
Balarka knew, evidently.
00:00 - 21:0021:00 - 00:00

« first day (4217 days earlier)      last day (1100 days later) »