• RiceMunk@sopuli.xyz
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    1 day ago

    I refuse to help with a problem as trivial as that. They should be perfectly capable of finding on their own any one of the 4 a:s in the picture they posted.

  • for_some_delta@beehaw.org
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    1 day ago

    I have learned from StackOverflow that we should always ask if this is homework. Otherwise, the solution appears fine.

  • PhobosAnomaly@feddit.uk
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    1 day ago

    Alright, education time needed!

    I’m a fair few years out from my entry level uni maths module, so:

    In between the second and third step of the solution, why is 1a / 2√a = 6

    not evaluating as

    a/√a = 12 ?

    • sacredfire@programming.dev
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      1 day ago

      It does, he just didn’t show that a/√a simplifies to √a. There are a couple ways to think about it, but the simplest is if you just wanna get rid of the square root in the denominator, you can multiply the entire left side by (√a/√a) which gives you a√a / √a√a. This then turns into a√a/a. From there you get to just √a

      • PhobosAnomaly@feddit.uk
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        1 day ago

        Fucking hell, thank you. I thought I was going quite mad - I’d just taken a detour in solving it instead.

        Cheers friend!

    • eta@feddit.org
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      1 day ago

      a = (√a)^2 = √a √a

      Then you have (√a √a) /(2 √a) = 6 and can cross out one √a and multiply by 2 to get √a = 12

  • melsaskca@lemmy.ca
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    1 day ago

    This is absurd. It says find “a” but which “a”? There are more than one. In American “math” there can only be one “a”. In British “maths” it looks like there can be more than one “a”, so it depends on where you are from.

    • LePoisson@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      What? “a” should all be the same value idk what teachers you had but math doesn’t change based on your location.

      • melsaskca@lemmy.ca
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        1 day ago

        I was being an idiot and didn’t put a “/s” behind. A bad joke about calling it “math” in North America and “maths” in the UK.

        • Rhaedas@fedia.io
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          1 day ago

          I was going to ask if anyone knew why each version developed preference in the area it’s used, but figured I’d just search myself. I swear, no link I found tells why, even the ones that claim they’ll tell why. It’s just something that occurred over time. There has to be a better reason.

    • Sidhean@piefed.social
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      1 day ago

      This makes American math much more difficult, as the first mathematicians used up all 26 letters in 1970, shortly after the invention of math.

      • RiceMunk@sopuli.xyz
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        1 day ago

        Little known math fact: Greek letters are in fact not real letters. They’re just random squiggles mathematicians come up with as notation because some asshole has already used up the other squiggles.