Scientia

Is it possible to have it shipped to the U.S.? I checked it out once I heard about the offer, but did not see shipping options for outside of the local area.

Video A great production from BBC. I had not seen this before so I figured I would post it for others that had not seen it. After I watched this, I downloaded the entire show and was very pleased with the quality, both in content and production value. It was refreshing to see quality graphic work put into an evolution video. **I posted this here so as to make it visible to everybody rather than sticking it in biology as it's more light-weight than I would expect for that forum. Feel free (as I know you would) to move it if deemed necessary.

One thing that I notice from a cursory view is that your solutions are written like fractions. I kept wondering why you were ending up with rational expressions until I noticed the pattern.

Thank you for your response. I'll be looking into Sturm's theorem, although it's probably way over my head at this point. I've pretty much just been doing what you mentioned. I just look at a specific term and estimate about what I need to change my divisor to in order to make it positive or negative. I was just wondering if there was something that I missed. I suppose that i'll just have to get used to the idea that not everything is perfectly clear, especially as I progress into more advanced mathematics.

I have a quick question regarding the identification of the lowest upper bound and the greatest lower bound for the zeros of a polynomial function. The method that my book shows is to use to upper and lower bound theorem involving synthetic division. This involves performing division with 1, 2, 3, etc. and -1, -2, -3 etc. until the bounds are found, but what if the lowest upper bound is something like 57 or 89? I'm I supposed to perform division for every number or is there a way to identify a smaller group of possible bounds. I've just been using the results of division to estimate about where it would be and eliminated possibilities from there, it just does not seem very...I don't know.. math-like to have to do that.

I seem to be having an inordinate amount of difficult with understanding the concept of horizontal stretching and compressing graphs. Vertical stretching and compressing makes sense. [math]y=2f(x^2)[/math] If I understand it, this is simply multiplying the output of the function by two. All that happens is that the [math]y[/math] value is double whatever it would be as a result of [math]y=f(x^2)[/math]. This means that an input of 1 gives a [math]y[/math] value of 2, an input of 2 gives 8. This would stretch the graph away from the x-axis due to the y value increasing faster than it otherwise would. The part that confuses me is when you multiply the [math]x[/math] value while it's inside of the function. I was unable to figure out how to graph Horizontal stretching on a calculator so I just manipulated the functions to show the graph that I wanted for this post. Below is the graph of [math]y=f(x^2)[/math]. This is simple enough, what confuses me is what happens when I give [math]x[/math] a coefficient greater than 1. [math]y=f(2x^2)[/math] Now I realize that to graph this, all that I have to do is multiply the [math]x[/math] coordinate by [math]1/2[/math] and keep the [math]y[/math] coordinate the same. [math](1,1)[/math] becomes [math](.5,1)[/math] and [math](2,4)[/math] becomes [math](1,4)[/math] etc. The problem is, I don't understand why this happens? Why am I not doubling the [math]x^2[/math] like I intuitively would? EDIT: I think I may have discovered what part of my problem is, [math]y=f(x^2)[/math] does not result in the graph that I have posted above as the function referenced by [math]f(x^2)[/math] is not given. I think what the book is asking is, what value of [math]x[/math], when multiplied by 2, gives the same output as the function would have if not multiplied by two. Is this correct? If so, it would explain what is happening as a function [math]f(x) = x^2[/math] (the actual function for the first graph) would indeed result in the value of [math]x[/math] needing to be .5 as [math]y=f(2x)[/math] when [math]f(2x)[/math] would be referring to [math]f(x) = x^2[/math]. .5 would be multiplied by 2 and then passed to the function which would square it to give the value of 1. Making the coordinates [math](.5,1)[/math].

I'm not a physicist (yet) but I would say that being open minded in any scientific field would mean that you do not dismiss theories that you do not agree with without objectively examining the evidence.

It's usually a good idea to keep the question and post the solution once it's found beneath the question. That allows others to view the solution if this thread is found via Google search or the forum's search function. Or was this thread just moved to a different forum? Meh.

Go to a local community college for a remedial math course. This will start from a very basic level and move up to pre-algebra. Don't be afraid to ask questions in class. Aside from that, without having an instructor, you will find any type of auto-didactic methods frustrating.

That was indeed a wonderful talk. Dawkins never fails to deliver.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wangari_Maathai

Religion is attacked because of it's demand to be believed as correct. (Varies with different religions.) A preference of pepperoni over sausage does not mean that the sausage eaters are wrong, it's accepted as an opinion. Many religions on the other hand declare themselves to be true and all others to be false. They may even go as far as to damn those who chose another belief to spend eternity in hell, or reincarnate as a lesser being or object. Now, depending on how far the religion takes this, it can become a burden on others which is evident through war and crime done in the name of any particular religion. There are many other reasons why religion is such a strong focus of dialectic such as it's claims on the origin of life and the universe. These are questions which we hope to one day answer through science. Many religions attempt to answer these but can not provide the evidence which a scientific approach requires. I recognize this as a difference between science and religion/faith however in a society where scientific amelioration has played a large role, it seems that more people are becoming dissatisfied with the reports given by some religions. I could digress further and take up more of your time however I will attempt to end this post quickly. Science and religion do not easily get along, it comes down to science's role in society and religion's. As science begins to replace religion's accounts with it's own, the debates will only grow in number and ferocity. While I feel that religion could be eradicated or at least demoted to mythology and we would be better off, my lack of experiment/studies do not lend me the authority to make that claim officially with any real credence. ^--$0.02

From the video it looks like he jumped or at least began to jump as the car hit the crates. This would make his movement completely separate from the crates, the only risk would be the possibility of him falling off early and being run over or having a crate hit the windshield and come back up at him. If he had stood on the crates the whole time he would have likely been just fine anyway. I'm not a physicist (yet) but if I had to guess I would say that his inertia (or resistance to a change in his state of motion) would keep him from moving anywhere but down due to gravity. The car would likely be well out of the way by then.

I'm pretty sure my focus with switch to C soon. I program in Python currently as a hobby.