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[Sirus]

I don't see a bird O_o

[freeformschooler]

It's just Vector continuing her unending quest to rumble Bay12's tummy.

[Putnam]

For those of us who understand a little math, this is incredibly lulzy.  It's a crank paper like none I've ever seen before.

However, it does not follow that the power set of the set of all natural numbers has the same degree of infinity as the continuum, since this would leave only two degrees of infinity. It might be more intuitive to assume that there are infinite degrees of infinity, as there are infinite finite numbers, than to presume a finite degree of infiniteness.  Why would there be less degrees of infinity than number of finite numbers?

I was laughing by halfway through the fifth page

[Vector]

This person is just so sincere.  The story about high school, all the mess about carefully defining things without any apparent self-consciousness... best crank is best

EDIT: If you read no other page, read the entirety of p. 26.  It's fantastic.

[Putnam]

Reminds me of... myself, hehe, if a calculator were my only math teacher in life

Related: I posted this on Facebook:

i^i = e^(-pi/2)!

Then I looked at it again.

i^i = e^(-pi/2)!

i^i = e^(-pi/2)!
i^i = e^(-pi/2)!

god dammit that's not right

[Flying Dice]

Is it me, or does Vector's avatar look like a bird?

An incredibly pudgy white and black parrotish bird, yes.

[kaijyuu]

Is it me, or does Vector's avatar look like a bird?

An incredibly pudgy white and black parrotish bird, yes.

My fiance was saying the exact same thing.

[freeformschooler]

All this talk of imaginary units and finite numbers, I have to ask something I've never understood: how are imaginary numbers useful in the real world? Are they actually used in the equations for calculating the position the wizard magnets need to be on Cern's LHC to create evaporating black holes? Do engineers use i to solve real mechanical problems at any given point? Do accountants use i to calculate the maximum profit point on a graph of price*volume sold vs. total profit or something?

[Vector]

Electricity and rotation, if I remember correctly.  Uh, and eigenvalues for matrices, which the physicists seem to like a lot.  Someone more applied-side should give a fuller answer, because I'm curious about this, too.

[MaximumZero]

I'm still not sure how we go from a+b=c to functions, matrices, vectors and whatnot. I mean, sure, I sort of got that far, but I never really understood the why behind any of the new tools. Nobody ever said, "Matrices are useful for this, functions are useful for that," they just said, "Do these until you get them right."

It's kind of depressing, actually.

[Max White]

Matrices are useful as a data aggregate. Functions are useful for... Well fuck what aren't they useful for? The usefulness of functions knows no bounds!

[Xantalos]

I always thought mathematicians just shrugged and said, "Why the fuck not?" when they were asked that question.

[freeformschooler]

In a proper math class ideally you'd have "Real World Problems" for those kinds of things. Of course when we went over i, the teacher just sort of scratched her head, but that's probably because we would have gone limp wristed at the sight of diff equations at that point.

[Lightningfalcon]

I knew who it was already, guys. I just thought I'd ask since usually it ends up with me finding a song I hadn't thought of yet, I haven't heard all of the C&C music yet.

I just coast on youtube.  The best is still Act on Instinct and Hell's March.  Those are the classic C&C songs.  And Mechanical Man.  You can't beat Mechanical Man. 

[Skyrunner]

freeformschooler: Quaternions, an imaginary number that cycles through four letters instead of one, like i, are apparently realy useful in 3d rendering...