The Learn Fun Facts blog posted an interesting fun fact about strings. Law’s fun fact is that 8+9+1+89+91=198. Why is this a fun fact? Because the left side of that equation takes every sequence of digits from 891 (except the whole thing) and adds them together to get the digits in reverse order. Contrary to Law’s statement, though, this is not the only three digit number … Continue reading
Tag: mathematics
ASMS: Math
There are countless pictures floating around at any given time asking people to do a simple arithmetic problem. Usually the problem requires knowing the order operations are carried out in. Then an argument ensues in the comments, usually with some people sounding really sure that the order of operations only applies in the context of a class on the order of operations. (You could of … Continue reading ASMS: Math
Enough LaTeX for basic logic typesetting
I’m currently taking a (meta)logic class. There are assigned problem sets. A lot of people either don’t know how to type logical symbols or else cannot be bothered to fight with Word. I’m a fan of LaTeX. I like it for several reasons, one of them being easy use of logical symbols. There are a lot of guides to using LaTeX. To my knowledge, none … Continue reading Enough LaTeX for basic logic typesetting
More reason to decimate nonprivate evaluation
Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò wrote a great piece on how he’s a teacher, not a job trainer. I commonly complain about liberal arts institutions being co-opted as job training centers. Táíwò’s article takes the individual perspective, and gets a better personal angle on why this is bad. My usual argument is primarily that life has a lot of awesome stuff to it, and making money really isn’t that much … Continue reading More reason to decimate nonprivate evaluation
The Collatz Trolley Problem
I enjoy a good trolley problem (meme). I came across this one and it presents an odd problem: All initial values of n thus far tested end up looping with 4, 2, 1, so if it’s any of those, I’m not sure how many people are sucked into the black hole. (Though it’s fewer than 5, so if the goal is minimization of deaths, … Continue reading The Collatz Trolley Problem
Disorder in multiple dimensions
This is a fun post. Clearly a similar argument can be ran to show the unorderedness of any other field with a rotational operator that just adds dimensions to the reals/complexes (quaternions, octonions, etc.) but I do wonder if either some other property (say, completeness) can be given up to get orderedness or else if some nonstandard field with non-flat geometry can be ordered. (And … Continue reading Disorder in multiple dimensions
