{"id":360,"date":"2015-10-12T08:01:22","date_gmt":"2015-10-12T13:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/meyersh\/?p=360"},"modified":"2015-10-11T21:04:35","modified_gmt":"2015-10-12T02:04:35","slug":"holding-off-on-evaluating-variables","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/meyersh\/2015\/10\/12\/holding-off-on-evaluating-variables\/","title":{"rendered":"Holding off on evaluating variables"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There is a difference between performing a calculation and solving a problem.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been considering the equation of a circle, <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/s0.wp.com\/latex.php?latex=x%5E2+%2B+y%5E2+%3D+r%5E2&#038;bg=ffffff&#038;fg=000&#038;s=0&#038;c=20201002\" alt=\"x^2 + y^2 = r^2\" class=\"latex\" \/>. Except, you see,\u00a0that&#8217;s not the entire thing. There&#8217;s a bit that we&#8217;ve dropped because it&#8217;s \u00a0zeroes (and therefore doesn&#8217;t affect our equation):<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/s0.wp.com\/latex.php?latex=%28x-h%29%5E2+%2B+%28y-k%29%5E2+%3D+r%5E2&#038;bg=ffffff&#038;fg=000&#038;s=0&#038;c=20201002\" alt=\"(x-h)^2 + (y-k)^2 = r^2\" class=\"latex\" \/>.<\/p>\n<p>This equation contains the\u00a0<em>full\u00a0<\/em>information\u2013everything that is necessary to draw and position a circle on a cartesian graph. You see, the <em>h\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0<em>k <\/em>move the circle around the graph. When the circle is on the origin, they are both zero and often dropped from the formula. When figuring something quickly with a circle, the shortened\u00a0form is more than adequate. However, without them, part of the story is lost.<\/p>\n<p>Similarly, if we have the task of working\u00a0a problem it is tempting to perform the arithmetic along the way. If we resist, however, at the end we produce a\u00a0<em>general solution<\/em> that may be used for other similar problems.<\/p>\n<p>Programming can\u00a0work the same way. We may write a program to\u00a0<em>perform a calculation. <\/em>This would involve lots of hardcoding, many assumptions making it\u00a0analogous to our &#8220;arithmetic along the way&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Alternatively, try leaving the variables in, or not doing the arithmetic along the way, and\u00a0preserve the\u00a0<em>information<\/em> in the equation which would otherwise be\u00a0lost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is a difference between performing a calculation and solving a problem. I&#8217;ve been considering the equation of a circle, . Except, you see,\u00a0that&#8217;s not the entire thing. There&#8217;s a bit that we&#8217;ve dropped because it&#8217;s \u00a0zeroes (and therefore doesn&#8217;t affect our equation): . This equation contains the\u00a0full\u00a0information\u2013everything that is necessary to draw and position &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/meyersh\/2015\/10\/12\/holding-off-on-evaluating-variables\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Holding off on evaluating variables&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[189,4057],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coding","category-maths","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p16T7G-5O","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/meyersh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/meyersh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/meyersh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/meyersh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/meyersh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/meyersh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":367,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/meyersh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions\/367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/meyersh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/meyersh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/meyersh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}