Yeah potato scallops are awesome.

I untune and tune my bass pretty much every day but that's for ear practise.

I dunno what I'll hit up for lunch tomorrow, I might be up all night 'cause I napped during the cricket but at least I'll be beating the heat.

I might be up all night too!
I ****ing hate the heat.
Argh, Norway here I come.

Reading a book by Brian Clegg about the history of Infinity.
Very detailed analysis (in the historical context), is quite refreshing after reading a few in similar topics which only touch upon what happened....

How can infinity have a history as such? Or is it like, the history of the evolution of man's concept of infinity in science/philosophy?

The later :)

I can do most maths pretty easily, most of it is automated substitution, so anything could do it. However, I want to know *what* I am doing, *why* I am doing it this way, for instance.
Unfortunately, in school I was just sort of taught the brute force way of doing maths, which is cool, just do the work, don't ask questions. (looking back, the way in which I "complained" about maths back at school was rather ridiculous, but with the advantage of foresight, I can actually see what I meant).

But it's left me with such a huge gap, which makes me uncomfortable, so I have to know more.

Oh yeah, evolution of mathemetical processes?

I did alright in maths until like year 9 when my class had this teacher who was really hard to learn off. It totally derailed my mathematical learning and I (and a lot of the rest of the class) never fully recovered. That was the first time I ever failed an exam. Doesn't happen often.

Basically, the evolution of mathematical process is so interesting to me, because we have repeated the same series of steps so many times (to the point, we can identify a time of crisis, but can't direct us where to go next).

I top-scored maths in year 7 (AME), and then the car accident, after which I was placed in Level 3 maths (lowest of low), and didn't get AME math at college as a result, I did year 11 AM, and for year 12 dropped to straight tertiary maths.

It wouldn't be for another 3 years that I would look at an equation again :p
But, through the integral connection of maths and programming, the logic of maths never left me, where-as most other students in my position (who didn't have the programming influence) would have long forgotten maths.

(First semester this year, first time I had done maths in a long time, took me about 2 weeks of "wtfing" before I came up with anything).

I'm sorry, I'm very bakefaced and just like waffling.

Hectic. I dropped maths after Year 10 'cause I just couldn't do it. I liked the probability stuff but other than that I was as useless as a chocolate kettle.

I swear, there must be something taught wrong about maths, it really is so simple.

I can do simple maths but I just haven't put it any serious time to learn any of the complicated stuff. It's like anything I suppose.

But really, advanced maths is just algebra.
We just abstract more of the problem into variables, through the logic of higher-order, we build sets of functions, which can further be passed to functions as arguments, and so on.

The biggest problem with maths is getting familiar with the terminology.

Yes, a machine couldn't do original mathematical research, but for most stuff, a Turing machine (the dumbest of dumb) would suffice.

I was never too crash hot at algebra.

x = 10;
x + 1 = 11?

That I can do. Just not the really hard stuff.

I can make one with no answer just to mess with someone :p.

a + b = c
a + b = d
c - d = 0

Solve for a, b and c.

That's my fallback plan if evil robots attack.

I think, all you need to know is that x really is an arbitrary symbol.

Not only could it represent 10, it could be (10 + 10), etc.
Then it simply becomes substitution.

I don't know what you'd consider Matrices, but I was once told they are advanced algebraic concepts, but they're quite simple, and the elimination method that allows them to be solved, is again, just substitution.

Honestly, maths is not difficult, and if at any point you found it difficult, you were either a) told it was difficult (some unconscious modeling at work here!), or b) had teachers who didn't teach you the full terminology.

It's interesting to note, the ancient Greeks had no concept of a number, they would "draw" their problems with shapes (hence why so much geometrical knowledge came from them), they generally found it easier to "visualise" the problems.

There have been studies which basically say, the mathematical mind of these days is totally different to the mathematical mind of ancient times, basically, somewhere in the evolution of science, our whole direction changed, seemingly unnoticed (at least, I have seen no real reference to this change).

Edit:

a + b = c
a + b = d
c - d = 0

Through substitution though, it becomes:
(a + b) - (a + b) = 0

Which (any quantity that negates it's positive self is 0), produces 0, and the equation holds (after all, 0 does equal 0).

However, in terms of solving it for particular variables, I'm not going to try (with hindsight that it is going to fail at some point).

Interesting stuff.

I can't imagine how people got along without a concept of zero. That'd be crazy.

"Hey, your only dog ran away. How many dogs do you have now?"
"...what?"

Haha, dam[size=2]n[/size]. I didn't think about that enough :upset:. I'll just have to tackle the evil robots with a bat.

i'm delving into obscure noise music for the hell of it

cassette only releases lol

Casette only? That's like the colours on a poison dart frog.

already hot, in the 30's

i have cricket today :(

Zinc it up.

[QUOTE=Meatplow;17083992]i'm delving into obscure noise music for the hell of it

cassette only releases lol[/QUOTE]
I;ll make you some random ****, encode it at 24 kbps and you can see if you like it

Chu would I be safe from robots now? I also just realised I typed my second line wrong, I meant for it to be as it is now.

a + b = c
a + d = b
c - d = 0
a ≠ b

Take that, evil robots. PC load letter indeed.

Bluey, seriously make a noise project for fun. I'll download it. We'll have a good time.

[QUOTE=gaslight;17083927]Interesting stuff.

I can't imagine how people got along without a concept of zero. That'd be crazy.

"Hey, your only dog ran away. How many dogs do you have now?"
"...what?"

Haha, dam[size=2]n[/size]. I didn't think about that enough :upset:. I'll just have to tackle the evil robots with a bat.[/QUOTE]

the arabs invented 0

I think it was India that first made a number out of zero.

no A-rabs

I've been reading about different base-systems for counting and stuff. Pretty interesting how many different systems we use at the same time.

[QUOTE=gaslight;17084715]Chu would I be safe from robots now? I also just realised I typed my second line wrong, I meant for it to be as it is now.

a + b = c
a + d = b
c - d = 0
a ≠ b

Take that, evil robots. PC load letter indeed.[/QUOTE]
Just through basic substitution:
c - d = 0
(a + (a + d)) - d = 0
2a = 0

a = 0!

I crashed out hard last night, sorry for no explanation.

I hope the evil robots aren't as smart as you.

Could you make an unsolvable one?

Just pose the halting problem, [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem[/url].

There are a few NP-complete problems, for which no efficient (general) solution is known (and some believe doesn't exist).

This is where the concept of "The system is sound; The system is complete" comes from.
(I can't find any links at th moment, and do not really have all the information in my head (it's rather a mind-****), but I have some notes from a formal proof theory course I took I could look at, but can't really be bothered).

Heavy stuff.

This is the fun part of maths :)

Edit: As an example, just go look at how many *different* proofs there are for Pythagoras' theorem (The square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides), they're all different, but all reach the same conclusion.

Epic: [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorem[/url]

0 is not a number, it has no inherent value. It's a concept that explains a lack of things.

Heh, say that to any computer scientist :evil:

0 is a number.

yeah, it's even at the end of 10. is 10 half a non-number? no

I think it can be considered a number because a number is an expression of an amount, and 0 is the expression of an amount, even if that amount is nothing.

Nah it's not. It's a concept, an operation, not a number. It's like saying that the = sign is a number in the equation...

We should take this to PNWI.

Though, I seem to recall we had a similar topic a while ago.

0 is part of our numeral system and recognised officially as a number, and an even number at that.

I've gotta throw my vote on the side of 0 being a number.

woo math!

how are you this morning after 4 *cough*16*cough* beers Aaron?

Aaron is like Bender, he's only sick when he doesn't have enough beer.