Computer programming books … Lol we don’t print them any more, they’d be obsolete before hitting the shelves.
Do be fair, that’s less because the fundamentals behind programming are changing and more because the specific implementations are changed all the damn time.
Yep, I got that “introduction to algorithms” (1100 pages tightly written, love it) and it still holds up ofc. I should have stayed in uni…
Programming: that book was printed a month ago, and it’s already obsolete.
Newspapers printed yesterday are already in the bin.
Tiktok posts last seconds before being discarded.
Mathematics teacher: That textbook was written thousands of years ago, and it is still as useful and relevant as ever, but I want you to buy this one I co-authored instead for the mere sum of $120, otherwise you won’t pass.
Conflict of interest detected
This really happened?
I took an environmental science class in college, and the professor was a former president of Shell. As part of the curriculum, we had to read his book, Why we Hate the Oil Companies. Predictably, it’s a corporate non-apologia, which—hilariously—completely avoids engaging with why we actually hate the oil companies.
Did people stand up to call the bullshit? I guess in this kind of situation you feel threatened that if you talk, you get penalized heavily
Not that I recall. I didn’t know anyone else in the class, and I don’t remember anything coming up in the class group chat. I did get quite heated with him at a couple of points, but I’m pretty sure he still gave me an A.
environmental science class … the professor was a former president of Shell
Do they also invite Nazis to teach the elective in human rights?
Iirc, it was an energy/environment focus, so it was all about analyzing and comparing different energy sources wrt their usefulness, feasability, environmental impact, etc. This was in Houston, so the oil industry plays a huge role in the local economy, and funds the university endowments.
But yeah, the whole thing was pretty farcical.
Not the original commenter, but I briefly had one professor in college that did that (their book was $50, though). It was an elective course for me, fortunately. I was able to switch for a different class that fit the same requirement without being forced to buy a book the professor wrote.
I admit I exaggerated a bit. It hasn’t happened to me, but I’ve had some teachers that strongly suggested buying their textbooks and frowned if you didn’t.
Fucking disgusting behavior
As a kid I thought Pythagoras was silly for making a math cult. Now that I’m older I get it.
That’s an interesting angle on it, can you say more? Sorry to be obtuse.
Well Pythagoras lived during the Greek era. Buildings like the Temple of Artemis were the greatest projections of power and grandeur the world had to offer at the time. Those great structures would’ve dwarfed anything seen out in the country. The only way those buildings could ever be erected is with the help of mathematics.
Furthermore mathematical truths are about as true as anything can be in the world. A triangle’s angles are always perfectly in harmony for instance. Way back when, when the world was much darker and more chaotic, those mathematical truths must’ve seemed like a great light in the darkness.
Mathematics is applicable truth.
Oh that book is outdated. That’s the second edition, you need the third addition to complete the one math problem I am basing your entire grade on for the course.
“Why yes I do happen to also be the author of the textbook for this course, why do you ask?”
Wrong for physics. Models to describe reality don’t magically become wrong just because a model with better predictive power is discovered. Most old models are special cases of newer ones.
Yeah, Newton wasn’t just a science bitch who is wrong, sometimes. His equations are the special case of General Relativity when acceleration is very low. Which is the world we live in.
Science is validated by the new information replacing the old. Al-Khwarizmi worked out numbers so we don’t have to,
My favorite way to connect people with academia is pointing out how recently zero was invented because even the most reluctant “I don’t know math” person understands zero these days.
Can you really understand zero? I mean, I get what it represents, but I still sometimes struggle to understand its usage…like, you can’t divide with zero thats for sure, but did you know you can divide a number with a really small number (like an infinitely small number) and you get a really large number (like infinitely large)? So, in that special space, if you suddenly replace “0” with a “number-so-close-to-zero-it-can-smell-it” feel free to divide and conquer, and get infinity.
Oh, and sometimes, if you feel like math is letting you down, remember, you can always use positive and negative zeroes, so your math-thing can now work!
I don’t understand why you can’t divide by zero.
If you turn it into a word problem 10/1 could be stated as “If you have 10 things and put them in a bucket, how many things do you have in the bucket?”
10/2 becomes “If you have 10 things, and and put an equal amount of them in two different buckets, how many things are in each bucket?”
So, wouldn’t 10/0 become “If you have 10 things, and don’t put any of them into the bucket, how many things are in the bucket?”
I’m bad at math, go easy on me.
The fact that there’s no buckets means that you can’t then usefully draw any further conclusions about the ratio of buckets to things. In your first two examples we can take the results and use them to work out further things like how much might the buckets weigh, what happens if we add more buckets or more things, etc.
In the divide by zero answer, we know nothing about the buckets, and the number of things becomes meaningless. But worse of all is that it’s easy to hide this from the unwary, which is why you occasionally see “proofs” online that 1=2, which rely on hiding divide-by-zero operations behind some sneaky algebra.
When we say we “can’t” divide by zero, we mean ok you can divide by zero, but you’ll get a useless answer that leaves you at a mathematical dead end. Infinity isn’t reversible, or even strictly equal to itself.
I think I get it, thanks for taking the time to explain.
With 10/2 there are two buckets, and 10/1 there is 1, so with 10/0 I was wrong to phrase it as there is a ‘bucket with nothing in it’, it should be ‘there is no bucket, so you can’t put anything in the bucket, even if you wanted to.’ Right?
Reality: The universe was spontaneously created last thursday and there is no way for you to disprove it.
Nah mate, it was already in existence by last Tuesday afternoon and there is no way for you to disprove it.
Since you made the claim, the onus of proof is on you. Go on, it’ll be interesting to see your proof.
This was made by someone who doesn’t understand any of it.
It’s called a joke.
Very funny, I’m laughing so hard. So true /s
I can tell you are just the best of conversationalists, try to leave some charm and charisma for the rest of us.
Poor you. I will make sure I laugh next time. Don’t you worry.
So, what’s it like living up your own asshole?
Sorry, too busy waiting. Not laughing yet. Have you tried asking yourself that?
The really funny part is the other two are also just math.
The fabric of reality is woven from math, and that’s beautiful.
I’ve got a pet theory that a hypothetical alien species’ music would be more recognizably similar to humans’ than their biology would.
This could make the plot of a great sci-fi book. Love the idea.
Math is just applied logic. Logic is just applied philosophy. Philosophy is just applied bullshit.
philosophy is bullshit if you don’t take it seriously, at least.
Me using a needle and a steady hand and philosophy to shitpost over the horizon
Easy as
I/II= ,V(OK, that was confusing, it’s
I/II= .Vin barbaric` )There’s a whole bit in The Incredibles about how math has changed since Bob was in school
That was probably inspired by the USA’s crappy national curriculum system of forcing kids to learn and use the lattice method which is 100% some sort of scam to make it look like math illiterate children are passing class and failing upwards.
I mean seriously, we’ve been using base 10 arab system for a millenia, but you’re trying to tell me the department of education came up with a better method of drawing a damn chi square matrix abomination that makes even the two millenia old roman numeral system look good in comparison.
You could make the same argument for things like mathematics before the discovery about imaginary numbers.
Ehh imaginary numbers added to the scope of mathematics it didn’t take away anything other than no’s.
“hey look, i got your no’s!”
No, it changed things like “how many roots does x² + 2x + 2 have” from “none” to “two”.
The answer to that question didn’t change, what changed is how you might interpret the question.
If I asked “what are the REAL roots of x² + 2x + 2” the answer is still “none”. And prior to imaginary numbers being widely used, that is how the question would have been understood.
Mathematics involves making choices about what set of rules we’re working with. If you don’t allow the concept of negative numbers, the equation “x+1=0” has no solution. If you give me an apple, then I have no apples, how many apples did I have before? The question describes an impossible situation, and that’s a perfectly valid way to view it.
Different sets of rules can change what’s possible but don’t invalidate conclusions based on other sets of rules. We just need to specify what set of rules we’re working with.
My entire point is that before they weren’t saying “real” versus “imaginary”. You’re proving my point. In the other fields mentioned you could make the same argument about the interpretation changing but the book still being useful.
The other fields are attempting to describe reality. While Newtonian physics is useful, as an approximation, it’s also quite clearly wrong. You can imagine a universe which follows those rules but it’s not this universe, and that’s why it’s wrong. Mathematics doesn’t care about this universe, so you can pick whatever rules you want. Imaginary numbers are not “more accurate”, they don’t invalidate any previous understanding. They are an imaginary concept with interesting properties. For mathematics, that’s enough.
Imaginary numbers are not “more accurate”, they don’t invalidate any previous understanding. They are an imaginary concept with interesting properties. For mathematics, that’s enough.
No. Imaginary numbers have the worst name. Like the Schrodinger’s Cat thought experiment it was something meant to mock the concept originally but stuck once real applications were found. Imaginary and complex numbers describe very real processes in nature and are not just some weird artifact of trying to get the square root of a negative number.
Here is an interesting video on the topic that also covers some of the applications used to describe things in nature. https://youtu.be/cUzklzVXJwo
If you prefer text here is an article listing some. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/maths/applications-of-imaginary-numbers-in-real-life/
Imaginary numbers have the worst name.
I agree, because really all numbers are imaginary. Numbers are also wonderfully useful for describing nature, and it’s amazing how what might start as a quest for completeness and elegance ends up reflecting something about the real world. Each extension on our use of numbers is an augmentation, an extended toolkit to solve different problems, but doesn’t negate anything which went earlier. For example finding the roots of a polynomial often represents a problem where complex solutions aren’t applicable, and “no solution” is the more meaningful result. One kind of mathematics may be bigger and more complete than another, but that doesn’t make it better or more true. It just depends on what you need from it.
The correct way to learn math is chronologically
Wrong. Good look fooling around without algebra for years. New methods make old maths easy.
…and even newer methods make old math insanely complicated, but much more generalized. Like building definitions for things like numbers and basic arithmetic using set theory.
/s
No sarcasm. Being able to use numbers, integrals and derivatives makes a huge amount of maths easy. Exponential function and it’s relatives are so handy. (Sin, Cos, Tan, Cot, log).
The Greeks didn’t have any of that to do their math.
I’m the one being sarcastic Einstein
Start with set theory. After about 300 pages you’ll be able to show what 1+1 equals.
To be fair, the first 100 pages of that was justifying the set theory definition for what numbers are. The following two hundred papers are proving that a process of iterative counting we call addition functions in a consistent and useful way, given the set theory way of defining numbers. Once we get to that point, 1+1 is easy. Then we get to start talking more deeply about iteration as a process, leading to considering iterating addition (aka multiplication), iterating multiplication (aka exponents), etc. But that stuff is for the next thousand pages.
Remember, 0 is defined as the amount of things in the empty set {}. 1 is defined as the amount of things in a set containing the empty set {{}}. Each following natural number is defined as the amount of things in a set containing each of the previous nonnegative integers. So for example 2 is the amount of things in a set containing the empty set and a set containing the empty set {{}, {{}}}, 3 is the amount of things in a set containing the empty set, a set containing the empty set, and a set containing the empty set and a set containing the empty set {{}, {{}}, {{}, {{}}}}, etc. All natural numbers are just counting increasingly recursively labeled nothing. Welcome to math.
