This thread is just what the title says it is. It is all about Math. You can post math jokes(the jokes don't have to be good), math questions, what you like about Math, or even why you hate Math.
My math joke: Resistance is not futile. It is voltage divided by amps.
Do you think you could help me with binary? I'm not very good at it. The whole concept goes way over my head for some reason :/
That's 50% of what my research paper is about, but people already seem to have given you the answer on how to count in binary, if you want to know more, feel free to ask.
[quote=Bladesam]Btw, I mean "hear" though maybe "see" is more correct. :P[/quote] Lol I think that it is generally accepted to use hear, even though you're technically reading... Like when you "talk" to a user online, unless you're using a IM site with mics, you are technically not talking to each other, but it is expressed as so.
I go to one of the, supposedly, poorest high schools in the area, but other than some of the immature kids in gangs and stuff we have a pretty good school. By senior year, I'll be in Calculus (hopefully and will take stat. in college. At this point, I'm not such a big fan of math (our teacher us awesome, but doesn't really teach a lot), so I can't say I'm really looking forward to further courses :P
Stats isn't really math. Ugh, I guess that means I need to defend that statement...
Math is based on things called axioms, where are essentially fundamental "truths" that mathematicians just say exist. For instance, something like "for any variable x, x=x" is an axiom. I mean, try to prove that x=x without using the fact that x=x. Harder than you would think, right?
ANYWAY. The point is, stats isn't entirely based around using axioms. Stats is all about studying functions that are relevant to the real world, but don't necessarily have any mathematical interest. For instance, the famous bell curve is only significant because things happen to often be distributed along a bell curve in reality. But, we don't really care about bell curves at all in mathematics.
As wikipedia says:
Because of its empirical roots and its focus on applications, statistics is usually considered to be a distinct mathematical science rather than a branch of mathematics.
I'm not pointing this out to be a stickler, I just think its something interesting that most people don't know about.
Oh, and a few pages back I think I saw someone say that imaginary numbers have no real use outside of their inherit novelty. Well, I would like to say that there is an entire branch of mathematics called "complex analysis" that deals with imaginary numbers. The neat thing about complex analysis is that you can take real numbers, transform them into the complex realm, and then bring them back. This allows you to do all kinds of stuff you can't do in the real domain.
For instance, many trig identities (such as thedouble angle formula for sine and cosine) are proved using complex analysis. Constants such as e and pi can only be rigorously defined using complex analysis as well.
[quote=nichodemus]More and more American schools are adopting Singapore's way of teaching math.[/quote] I wonder if it will decrease the amount of people passing...
[quote=nichodemus]Well, results have shown that people are getting better at tests....It's not so much the syllabus as the way they teach it.[/quote] Oh, ok. Well, that is really good to hear.