• 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.