this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2024
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Science Memes

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Conversing with Mathematicians (mander.xyz)
submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 102 points 1 month ago (2 children)

When all you have is an imaginary hammer, everything looks like a rotation around the imaginary unit circle.

Explanation of mathsx = -10, i = √-1 so i² = -1 and 10i²=-10

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Found the math but no explanation.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The squareroot of 100 is ±10.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 month ago (3 children)

The square root is always positive, but you can plug it into the quadratic formula to get the two possible values.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Okay, fine the square roots of 100 are ±10.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Seems very inaccurate the we can only determine the square root to +-10.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That's not how the square root is defined.

You're confusing "square root of 100" with "the answer to x^2 = 100". These are different things.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Which is why I differentiated between square roots and the principle square root by saying the square roots instead of the square root on the second comment.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago (2 children)

so you came up with your own term to cover your mistake?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

No, I was being pedantic to appease the pedantic assholes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Nope, everything they said is well established and correct

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Oops, my bad

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

There's no reason to bring the quadratic formula into this. Square roots can be negative, but when talking about the square root it's normally assumed to be the principal square root, which is the positive one.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Nope. To clarify, square roots are the opposite of squaring.

Now ask yourself:

What is 10² ?

What is (-10)² ?

If you get the same answer, then they are both the roots of the answer. +10 and -10 then gets together called ±10

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

IIRC, your spoilery “so” is the other way round. The right side is the definition, and the left-hand side a layman’s shorthand, as the root operator isn’t defined on negative numbers.

I might very well be wrong. My being a mathematician has been over for a while now, my being a pedantic PITA not though.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

I don't know enough to know how correct your pedantry is (technically or not), but to explain the meme it made sense to go through the symbols in the order you see them. I never got any points from the proof questions in exams anyway.