"The Romans did not number days of a month from the first to the last day. Instead, they counted back from three fixed points of the month: the Nones (5th or 7th, depending on the length of the month), the Ides (13th or 15th), and the Kalends (1st of the following month). The Ides occurred near the midpoint, on the 13th for most months, but on the 15th for March, May, July, and October. The Ides were supposed to be determined by the full moon, reflecting the lunar origin of the Roman calendar. On the earliest calendar, the Ides of March would have been the first full moon of the new year."

Also a good day for killing Julius Caesar

And an appropriate response to all that Pi Day nonsense. People should live in fear of irrationality, not exultation in it!

You fear irrational numbers ?
I fear imaginary numbers.

I wouldn't be so negative about irrational numbers. Just square it twice, Dorothy, and you'll be back in Kansas!

But we do have a gift card to Chick-Fil-A

I'll take a rain check to No Name instead although I don't like how they have mainstreamed that joint.

I would seriously be delighted to host you there. But I know better places for clams, and fish & chips.

I know just where to shove that quahog.

Is that you, Ishmael?

Dave the Atheist Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I know just where to shove that quahog.

"Then at last come the clams
Steamed under rockweed and poppin' from their shells
Just how many of 'em down and down our gullets,
We couldn't help ourselves!"

("This Was a Real Good Clambake," from "Carousel," Rogers & Hammerstein 1945)

Dave, you're invited too. Warning: I'll bend your ear into a pretzel talking about my novel. TheLittleNeckFiend

Imaginary numbers are more useful than imaginary friends.

Imaginary numbers are immensely useful if one is nerdy enough to appreciate them!

In digital signal processing, complex numbers are the very life blood of the field. Neither voice recognition, nor cell phones, nor MP3s would be possible without them.

Correction from upstream post by LW: it's not irrational numbers that you square twice to get back to Kansas. It is i (= SQRT(-1) ) that you square twice to get back to Kansas. The reason that works is that in the complex plane, multiplying a number by i rotates it 90 degrees (pi/2 radians would be the preferred nomenclature, but hey). So squaring i rotates by 90 degrees twice, reversing the direction of a number. That is the technical reason why multiplying a positive number by a negative number gives a negative result. The "direction" of the original positive number is twisted by 180 degrees in the complex plane, reversing its direction. It is also why a negative times a negative yields a positive result. Again, the "direction" of the original negative number gets turned 180 degrees in the complex plane, from the negative X axis to the positive X axis.

But back to squaring i twice: that is equivalent to multiplying a value by i four times, which is four 90 degree rotations, and you are right back where you started, after a little spin around the block.

A formula that codifies all this, and BTW impressed the hell out of Richard Feynman when he was 15 years old, is e^(i*pi) + 1 = 0, or alternatively, e^(i*pi) = -1. That combines pretty much all of the big guns of mathematics into a single identity: e, i, pi, 0, and 1, as well as the operations of addition, multiplication, and exponentiation. That is kind of jaw-dropping. (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler%27s_identity )

There are some irrational numbers that become rational when you square them once - the square root of 2 being a simple example. However, in general, for most irrational numbers, squaring them just gives you another irrational number. pi squared is irrational. I assume pi squared squared is irrational. So, in general, squaring an irrational number twice does not get you back to Kansas. Points for a clever analogy, though, even if misapplied. :)

Yes, nerdy. but it was handy for getting a paycheck at one point in life.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/15/2019 07:44PM by Brother Of Jerry.

Yup. I meant imaginary when I said irrational, and I was in fact just referring to i. Squaring i gets you to -1, which is rational, but I thought that anyone who wants to get back to Kansas would probably be more comfortable with a positive 1. So i^2=-1, and i^4 is Topeka.

I like nerds.

I didn't know BoJ is such a math nerd. *LOL*

I was a math major, though I spent most of my life in more or less mathematical software. the irony is that the only D I got in HS was in Algebra II. I still can't factor polynomials worth a damn. What pointless torture that was!

Humans are pattern-matching creatures, and math is basically the study of patterns, some abstract, some concrete. A four year old can entertain itself by simply counting out loud to 100, and be rather pleased with her/himself at the accomplishment. Numbers give kids a sense of power. Too bad we beat it out of most of them. I was lucky. Aspergers helped. :)

Plus I am old and have accumulated a massive store of knowledge of varying levels of usefulness.

I don't even know the difference between a dot product and a cross product

My imaginary friends are real. It's just the friendship that is imaginary.

The irrational ones can be difficult.

Personally, I prefer Transcendental numbers.

How do they bend their little legs into the Lotus position?

One hit wonder *LOL*