Squaring is a lossy process. That is, when a number is squared the root is lost. The search for roots is further complicated because many whole numbers have irrational roots. Even intuition is misleading, take a guess that the square root of 4 might be half (and you’d be right), but geometric growth would indicate …
Category Archives: Maths
Holding off on evaluating variables
There is a difference between performing a calculation and solving a problem. I’ve been considering the equation of a circle, . Except, you see, that’s not the entire thing. There’s a bit that we’ve dropped because it’s zeroes (and therefore doesn’t affect our equation): . This equation contains the full information–everything that is necessary to draw and position …
Naive Programming
I think that may always be the case, especially when the resulting program is a function of what I’m asked to do! I was instead considering how, give experience in mathematical reasoning and programming, one writes increasingly concise code. Because of the intense usefulness of Maths in programming, I cannot grok my fellow students’ disapproval …
Helping a little, old (rich) lady
One day, on the drive home from work, I witnessed an elderly lady in battered clothes struggling. Her wheelie basket, piled with laundry, had gotten stuck. In an unexpected and unprecendented pang of empathy, I stopped and offered assistance. Delighted to have me after, apparently, struggling for some time I was quickly able to pop …
Little Gödel
One day, little Gödel went to class. For whatever reason—perhaps, an unhappy love affair or a bad hangover—little Gödel’s teacher did not feel like teaching. Instead, he instructed the class to sum all of the integers to one hundred, that is, to calculate . The teacher correctly expected most of the class to do what …