Yeah. Same when someone says 22/7 is pi, rather than an approximation for pi, or when someone says 1 + 1 = 1 in Z2, or anything like that. It drives me completely bonkers.
Here's what drives me bonkers. The Calc I kids in the other Calculus class at my high school learned a new trick that they've been trying to show to every living being on the planet.
You see, you start out with a circle with a diameter of 1, boxed in by a square. The square thus has a perimeter of 4. If you take the corners in, the diameter is still 4. If you repeat that fractally and infinitely, eventually the polygon's shape will conform almost exactly to the circumference of the circle. The circumference of the circle is equal to pi, and thus pi is equal to 4, as the outer polygon still has a perimeter of 4.
I think this is what was called "squaring the circle" by my Calc professor. (He and another student would sometimes go off on massive tangents about higher-level mathematics, so I really had no clue what they were talking about most of the time.)
It doesn't work because there will always be spaces between the lines that define the corners-folded-in square and the circle - and you can't use calculus to define the square-diameter approaching that of the circle because there is no determined lower bound for the limit, i.e. it's not being approached from both sides, only one, and, iirc, limits and derivatives only work when it's being approached from both sides.
Not to mention it wreaks hell with the logic behind the area equation. After all, supposedly area=pi*r^2 for circles, and s^2 for squares.
So with our 1-diameter circle and defining pi as 4, we have:
area of circle = 4*.5*.5=1
and
area of square = 1^2=1.
However, it is quite obvious that the circle and the square don't have the same area, and also that the square's area isn't constant and thus can't be used to determine a constant that would be used for computations in both area and perimeter of objects without proper accomodations, which would probably involve a hell of a lot more calculus than I'm willing to do.
And this simple response turned into one rather long and probably underinformed math rant. Wow, I haven't done THAT since I convinced the guy that being charged $5.00 a month for a service for an entire year doesn't mean you get stiffed because of February's lack of day length.
So I guess this entire post is just a more long-and-drawn-out version of what everyone else is saying. >.<
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Topic: Things that made you RRRRRRAAAAGGGGEEEE today: Trust-o-nomics Edition (Read 3705341 times)