MathCat

And thus, ontology.

I think the way you're using jargon here doesn't make sense. What's a "psychosomatic identity" versus any other kind of identity? Also, you've got to recognize that lot of clothing people wear are a result of greater social factors like class and ethnicity. A lot of my work clothes fits tightly because I get it from Goodwill and therefore can't have it fitted. It isn't some greater, revealing statement to my identity or inner mind. It's just me as an individual meeting the challenges of being an adult in the working world.

The sciences in general could use more funding. Perhaps the government could spare one less nuclear weapon in order to produce some much needed development in these areas. My only quibble with OP's claims is that Schizophrenia disproportionately affects the impoverished and minorities instead of richer majorities. It's not equally distributed, at least in the United States.

I have no idea what the purpose of this kind of a thing would be. I think you would have people sign up and use this service for entertainment or maybe to test their compatibility with certain mates, but the idea that this is somehow going to have any affect on mores and "family" values is likely very misplaced. The only way I would see this having any greater effect on the society is if this were required in order to have kids. Thankfully, there be absolutely no way to mandate this kind of procedure. Furthermore, how are you going to define what makes a good parent? Scientists usually make terrible philosophers.

A couple of things about this question... Firstly, One of the major criticisms of DSM-IV is that the criteria for diagnosis are kind of obdurate and rigid. So, for example, here's DSM-IV's criteria to be diagnosed with Somatoform Disorder: I understand that we're on DSM-V right now, but I want to use this example to illustrate my point. That is, ADHD is a classification of symptoms that is typically recognized by a psychologist or psychiatrist behaviorally regardless of underlying brain activity. This does not mean that your idea is irrelevant, it's just that operational definitions that we're working within for ADHD are behavioral and not neurological, yet you're positing an origin that's neurological. Since the diagnosis is behavioral, it is generalized and subject to change as the DSM changes. Secondly, the old introversion and extroversion model is also a behavioral instead of neurological. While you are correct in saying the behavioral patterns manifest themselves from underlying brain activity, this is a trivially true statement. This is because all behaviors and traits are a result of underlying brain activity. The issue of greater interest to most psychologists (and myself) is the interaction between the hardware that is the brain and rest of the world which generates these brain functions in the first place. So effectively I'm reading your question as, "Does this model of behaviors possibly come as a result of a certain degree of "brain activity?" Notwithstanding, your language is very ambiguous. By "brain activity," do you mean within the prefrontal cortex? The Amygdala? The Lymbic System? What kind of activity are you referring to? The communication of synapses? Growth? Contemporary psychology as a science is largely about using terms with operationalized definitions so that we're all communicating the same ideas to each other when we talk. Finally, while I'm sure there's contemporary research on both phenomenon neurologically, it isn't advanced enough for us to make claims about it yet.

Thank you Endy0819 for your response as I found your insight very useful on the second problem. Thank you Studiot for sharing some of you oldschool wisdom. I agree that the current curriculum is piecemeal and lacks context, but was not aware of these older books / methods. I will look into these texts.

No offense taken. It is true that I did not get very good education growing up and that's why I'm humbly asking for help on this forum. To clarify, these questions aren't for any kind of test or class. I simply am studying mathematics because I find it enjoyable. I will however return the remark. No offense intended, but I get the impression that you are much older or had access to good educational facilities growing up. My experience as a university tutor for 4+ years is that most college algebra classes don't even go over this kind of material anymore since it isn't necessary to fulfilling many higher math curriculums. To clarify, I did mean universIty tutor (as in, not community college). In fact, where I grew up, Geometry wasn't even offered until High School, and the idea of an elementary school geometry or algebra book is foreign to me. Furthermore, I can see how my post openly illustrates a lower strata on algebraic understanding, but I don't see how my post demonstrates any misunderstanding of arithmetic. I am currently working through two college algebra texts, a survey of geometry text, and two software packages from Hawkes Learning System. I started about six days ago.

Thanks for this, and I understand your reasoning. If we define the perimeter of the distance around a two dimensional shape, it still is a little odd to me why the perimeter of a full rectangle is equivalent to a rectangle with a large piece missing from it. Anybody have any thoughts on the second one?

Hello out there, I am a long time lurker of this site, but this is my fist post. When I was in primary school, I never particularly cared for mathematics. I used to think it was boring and was not given any context for the work I was doing. Years later, in college, I would read the work of Rene Descartes and it really revolutionized how I thought about mathematics, geometry, and the world around me. I might be a bit of an eccentric, but I spend a lot of my free time studying maths and get a lot of enjoyment out of it. This enterprise wound up leading me into finding this website and spending a lot of time on it. I started studying from the ground up on all the stuff that I missed out early on in my academic career and, three years later, I am now employed full time as a mathematics tutor. Recently, I've been trying to get a better grasp of Algebra and Geometry. I'm kind of embarrassed because I can tutor higher maths but these basic questions are currently tripping me up. I was wondering if anyone on this site would be willing to lend me a hand since these guys are tripping me up. It might be kind of challenging, but that's why I broke down and got an account. Here's the first one: What's the perimeter of this shape? My original impression was to divide it into two rectangles. My issue with doing it this way is that I cannot seem to divide the image into enough meaningful parts to get a perimeter. So while I can create defined auxiliary lines to separate the image into two rectangles (lines a and b), I am left with either a rectangle simply composed of 2L or simply composed of 2W. My second thought was to try to turn it into one big rectangle, but I don't think I can do that meaningfully either since there's no way (I can think of) to do so yet control for the extra space I'm adding to this shape. So, for example, if I find the perimeter of one big rectangle L = 20 and W = 30, I don't really know how much space to subtract from the smaller missing piece. The only other thing I can think of is dividing it into three rectangles and dividing those three into six triangles. That would be a huge thorn in my side but I'm wondering if that's possible. Please note that the image is not drawn to scale. Here's the second question: "A chemist takes a solution containing 40% water and mixes it with a solution containing 50% water in order to make 200L of a solution containing 44% water. How much of the 50% solution is used?" I can solve this question with the following equation: .40(200-X) (.50)X = (.44) 200 As indicated, I know how to answer this one. My question is why does this equation actually work? What is this piece of information saying? The way that I read it is "If you take the value of two hundred minus the amount of fifty percent solution and multiply it by forty percent and multiply this number by the value of fifty percent times the amount of fifty percent solution, you will get the value of forty-four percent times two-hundred." To me, when I read that equation, I don't feel like it meaningfully interprets the problem from English to math. Can someone lend me a hand on this one? The rest of the stuff that I'm currently working on is combining like terms, simplifying expressions, FOIL, and Cartesian Planes. I feel confident in my ability to handle that stuff because the information is kind of plainly written in my books. The ones that I posted I cannot seem to find anywhere online and that's why I figured I'd post them here and ask for help. I DID READ THE RULES BEFORE POSTING, and If this isn't the most appropriate subforum I apologize in advance, but I felt that it would be best placed here. Thanks, MathCat