Dave

Fallout was good, although I didn't get around to playing Fallout 2. Had some great gameplay and graphics (at the time, anyway).

Can't form a conclusion after reading about the prices of a couple of cars in a forum

It does make a lot of sense to do that. I think perhaps making a comment should be mandatory, not just optional.

Quite. Joining for the purpose of just playing the arcade is a bit pointless really

I think that's a bit harsh to be honest, it's a heck of a lot of points to be taking off in one go without some kind of comment.

If it wasn't for things like air resistance, then the bullet would come down at the same speed that it was fired. Simple kinematics and parabolic paths can tell you this.

Cheers, was wondering where that option had gotten to.

Not with current day technology. Imagine how much fluid (okay, molten rock under high pressure, so not necessarily fluid) is involved here, and you'll see the general problem

They always do.

This is a quick and dirty guide to using mimeTeX on the forums. The aim is to make it a little bit easier for you all to post proper mathematics, and not have to mess around with bracketing and things like that. The first thing to note, is that when you use the math tag to encompass an equation, there cannot be any spaces in the text. Otherwise, your equation will not render properly. Instead, you must use a tilde (~). The second thing is, because mimeTeX is essentially a front-end for TeX, this means that syntaxically, the language is quite complex. This is for a good reason; it is very hard to properly typeset mathematics, and a great amount of detail is needed to know where things go. The basic language is quite simple. There are a vast array of commands, all preceeded by a backslash (\). These print various mathematical symbols. For example, \phi would print [math]\phi[/math], or something like \sin would (rather obviously) print [math]\sin[/math]. Also remember that mimeTeX is case sensitive. This means that \sin is not the same as \Sin. Basically, you type the equation as you would say it. Greek letters are printed by commands; capital greek letters have a capitalised first letter. For example: [math]4$\sigma[/math] - lower case sigma with <math>\sigma</math> [math]4$\Sigma[/math] - upper case sigma with <math>\Sigma</math> There are six font sizes: 0-5. Use these at the beginning of your statement as follows. normal size: [math]~e^{x^2}[/math] (Produced with 3$e^{x^{2}}) largest: [math]5$~e^{x^2}[/math] (Produced with 5$e^{x^{2}}) Some commands, such as sqrt, take an argument. So if you wanted the square root of x^2+7, you'd use <math>\sqrt{x^2+7}</math> - which looks like this: [math]4$\sqrt{x^2+7}[/math]. Now for subscript and superscript. This is quite simple - if you want subscript, you use an underscore (_). If you want superscript, you use a hat (^). What you want in the superscript and/or subscript is enclosed by curly brackets ({}). For example, say you wanted x^2. You'd use <math>x^{2}</math>. Strictly speaking, you don't need the curly brackets for simpler expressions, but I always find it more useful to keep them. If you want a subscript and a superscript, this is fine. You just need to put one after the other - it doesn't matter which way around. For example, <math>x_{1}^{2}</math> is exactly the same as <math>x^{2}_{1}</math> (the output of which is [math]x^{2}_{1}[/math]. Some functions, such as \int and \lim put superscripts and subscripts in special places (i.e. below lim, the limits on the integral, etc). For example: [math]5$\Bigint_{a}^{b}~x^{2}~dx=b^{2}-a^{2}[/math] (produced with 5$\Bigint_{a}^{b}~x^{2}~dx=b^{2}-a^{2}). The last thing I'll talk about is fractions. These are created with the frac command. For example: [math]5$\frac{1}{2}[/math] (produced with 5$\frac{1}{2}). [math]5$\frac{1}{1+\frac{x}{1+x^{-2}}}[/math] (produced with 5$\frac{1}{1+\frac{x}{1+x^{-2}}}). I hope this is of some use; it is by no means a comprehensive guide. I haven't covered brackets, matrices, and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you want a more in-depth look, then have a look at http://www.forkosh.dreamhost.com/mimetexmanual.html, which is the manual for mimeTeX. Please post any other suggestions/mistakes below. Thanks.

Where appropriate, it would be great if you could use the math tags that are inbuilt into vB. For example, instead of saying "the integral from a to b of x^2", you can represent this properly by using: \int_{a}^{b}x^{2}dx This turns out to look like: [math]\int_{a}^{b}x^{2}dx[/math] Which in my opinion is a lot better I'll be posting a mimeTeX crash course, and if we implement the (hopefully) better latex tags, I'll do a similar thing. Thanks.

I'd help, but I don't really know what you're trying to ask.

Happy birthday.

Just finished. For those that want to have a quick look, check http://realm.xyloid.org/lateximg/genimage2.php out. (blike, check yer pm )

There's another thing I'm working on atm, and that's to create some proper math typesetting on here using a latex renderer. What we've got atm is mimeTeX, which is okay, but I don't like the quality of the images, and I think it's very constrictive; not being able to leave spaces, for example, is a major pain. I've created a primitive latex renderer, and I'm now working on just beefing it up a bit for proper integration with vB (if faf/blike decide they want to use it).

In the UK, we get tested in years 2, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13. For people who aren't from the UK, year 2 equates to 6-7 year olds (I think).

Well you don't know what bacteria you're actually cultivating, and I'd think that some bacteria is slower to cultivate than others anyway.

I would imagine something like that would be fairly hard to be honest.

I think what I'm going to try to do is do two questions; one hard, and one fairly easy so that it appeals to all. If you haven't seen the existing questions, have a look in the Competition forum in the maths category.

Needs more games really, noticed quite a few around you might want to try. I think it also needs some kind of post count limit or something as well.

It's good fun, would be brilliant if it had some kind of graphical representation of the impact.

I personally feel that at a younger age, say around mid-teens, some people just don't have the desire to go and actually go out and learn things by themselves. The thirst for knowledge, for me, came as we started specialising in subjects when I turned 17, and I knew that really I wanted to do something mathematically orientated. The education system definately has its flaws. I agree to a certain extent with what you're saying; I think it's definately too constrictive and wastes a lot of time in many people's cases. I for one absolutely despised things like religious education, boring it projects, french, etc, and if given the chance, would have dropped them in an instant. However, for the people not quite sure what they want to do when they grow up, specialising too soon is putting quite a lot of pressure on an individual at quite an early age. The problem is inherantly finding a compromise between an education that is very specific and extremely flexible in choices and one which is more rigid and allows for less specialization at an early age. I do believe that people should be given a choice as to what they want to do at an earlier age. I also believe that people need the core skills of English (or a primary language used in the country of origin), numeracy, and IT. However, things like a second language, philosophy, etc are for some people a waste of space and they definately shouldn't be inflicted on those that don't want to learn them.

Nice hat Here's a photo of me with my favourite drink.

Was just wondering whether anyone had any ideas as to how to get more people posting on these mathematics forums more frequently. We definately don't have the largest userbase in the world, but I think it's a shame to just let the forums go to waste. The competition idea was a good idea (I think), but I didn't get too many replies from it. I think I may have made the problems too hard, and this put a lot of people off. If anyone has any other ideas, I'd love to hear them, because I quite enjoy reading the posts on the maths forums and it'd be great to get some more people on them Cheers.

Yup. But yeah, the parachute thing might persuade him to believe that a similar effect is enforced in any object travelling through the air.