Greg H.

Except that's wrong because [math] 7 \div 3 > 2.3333333333333333333333333333333333 \times 3[/math] You could say [math] 7 \div 3 = (2 \times 3) + 1[/math] Which is why kids get introduced to the concept of remainder division first. It's not pretty, but it's at least mathematically accurate.

This is one of the most asinine things I have ever read on this forum. I have no words to adequately respond to this. I can only assume that at this point you have to be trolling.

I have always made a firm distinction between people who are ignorant of a subject, and people who deliberately remain uneducated on a subject (stupid people as opposed to unintelligent people.). I have no problem with ignorant or unintelligent people. They don't know any better - hating them would be like hating a child because it doesn't know why grass grows. Having raised three kids myself, I can tell you that developing patience for the ignorant is almost mandatory. Unintelligent people may simply not be able to grasp the advanced concepts in the discussion, even with repeated explanations. They're at least making the effort to understand, but they just don't get it, for whatever reason. I think we all fall into that category on certain subjects - I, for example, am hopelessly unintelligent in the area of Chemistry. After a full year of Chem in high school and two semesters of Freshman Chem, I finally said to hell with it, and went back to physics, which I at least understood. As for the stupid - those who, despite their intelligence, make a conscious choice to remain uninformed (or deliberately misinformed) on a topic - I don't hate them, I pity them. Their minds are so inelastic, they aren't even capable of being educated past the point they have already attained. And that's just sad.

It depends on within which field you plan to develop applications. From my own perspective, in the financial world, I found logic and discrete math to be far more important for me than my calculus lessons. Working where I do, most of the intricate financial calculations are written by specialists who do nothing but that and have a much more in depth knowledge not only of the business, but of the math itself. The logic and discrete math came in much handier for me for algorithm writing to handle processing the calculation results and applying them. Remember, unless you're doing pure math, the calculations are generally not the end result of your program - they're the intermediate step, and following that will be the application of the result in some fashion. That said, you do have to know enough of the math to be able to write adequate test cases for your code. If someone hands me a calculation to implement, I need to know enough of the math behind it to understand what a nonsense result looks like, so I can make sure I test my code to handle those results.

If you're preparing for an exam, I would just start writing programs that answer the questions likely to be on the exam. It may be tedious, but practice will help you remember. Another idea may be to just write it on paper in pseudo-code. The exact syntax only matters when you know what language you're going to be implementing in; actual syntax is unimportant when you're discussing basic principles such as design patterns and algorithms. Pseudo-code will help you more easily separate knowing how to program well from the business of writing actual code.

On a related topic, I had a long conversation with my daughter last night about paying attention to people. She has a bad habit of blurting out the answers to questions without listening to what the question is asking. She does the same thing in her math homework. She'll spend an hour finding the right answer to the wrong question. I never understand why that is.

By definition, Ohm's law states a direct relationship between the voltage, the resistance, and the current. That is, there is a constant of proportionality between the current and the voltage. If the current varies, the voltage will vary by a proportional amount, and vice versa. However, as others have pointed out, there are a great number of materials that do not obey this definition because there is no fixed relationship between the amount of current and the amount of voltage. The constant of proportionality varies as the current changes. So these materials do not follow Ohm's law, because the R factor in the equation varies in conjunction with the current. The equation applies, and can be used to determine the various terms, assuming you know any two of them, but Ohm's Law itself does not hold true, because the materials in question do not maintain a constant proportion. Look up the term non-ohmic material. 1: Oliver Heaviside (1894). Electrical papers 1. Macmillan and Co. p. 283

In 1 dimension: [math] 1/r^{1-1}[/math] [math] 1/r^0[/math] [math]1[/math] If I understand the application correctly, it wouldn't drop off at all.

Flying's easy. Lots of things can fly. Heck I can fly, given a sufficiently large amount of thrust, and I'm as aerodynamic as your average rock. What I really want to know is how he can emit varying wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation from his skull without melting his own brain. It also makes me wonder if he could serve as his own radio transmitter.

Actually the correct statement would be the chances of me being alive after the shots were fired are 1, because I am. The chances of all 100 bullets missing is another question entirely. Maybe they all hit exactly what they were aiming at, it just wasn't me. The probability of this universe existing exactly as it does is 1, because - well, it exists, exactly as it does. We can't compute the odds of the universe forming this way because we only have one example of a universe (this one) to work with. My ethics professor used to say "You will never get the right answer if you keep asking the wrong question."

This isn't necessarily true. How do you define an "efficient" universe? Also, it's been shown (I won't go into the details, they're on another very long thread here on SFnet, and I won't hijack this thread with that discussion) that this universal makeup is not necessarily the only capable of supporting the physical universe as we know it. I don't have the link, but yodaPs I believe has a thread that topic.

I think you've actually stumbled upon the difference between thinking and talking to yourself, though that's just my opinion. Try this: Throw a ball at someone else with the intention of putting the ball exactly where they can catch it. Your brain just did what it actually a fairly involved physics calculation, automatically accounting for distance, overall area the catcher can intercept the thrown ball, the weight of the ball, and a thousand other minute variables, and you did it without ever "thinking" a word. You don't say in your head "I need this ball to go where Fred can catch it" You just pick up the ball and throw it at Fred. Edit: Although I have a hypothesis that if you really want to know someone's native tongue, walk up to them and kick them in the shin as hard you can. Chances are whatever tongue they start yelling at you at is either their native tongue or the one they use most frequently. At that point though you may want to run away.

The first four commandments basically boil down to: I am the new God and I have a bigger dick than your old God. You better worship me or else. Also, take a day off once in a while so you can come to my temples and remind yourself how damned utterly awesome I am. The last six are basically: Here's a rule about paying attention to the old folks, and another 5 rules that are just good common sense if you don't want the rest of the neighborhood to beat the crap out of you on a daily basis.

i thought that was the case, based on his response, but I wanted clarification - sometimes I misread things. Thanks again.

That really doesn't make any sense to me at all. I don't want to hijack this thread anymore than I already have, but if you've got a more in depth explanation you could shoot me in a private message, I'd love to read it. Edit: Imatfaal was kind enough to provide a more in depth explanation that has corrected the error in my interpretation as to what was going on. Carry on without my prattling.

Thanks everyone. I suppose the problem is I don't use either degrees or radians in my everyday work, so when I'm forced to think about angles and circles I immediately default to degrees because that's what I understand from school. I appreciate the insight. One question. If I understand what's being said, then 1 radian will always be equal to the radius of the circle, regardless of the value of that radius. Is that correct, of have I misunderstood something?

My sole contention here has been that you were incorrect when you said The other examples were simply more of the same. You can derive the equations down to however many factors you like, but based on the provided, [math]p[/math], or [math](mv)[/math] if you prefer, cannot change without changing [math]E_k[/math] unless [math]m[/math] also changes. Either all three remain the same, or at least two of them have to change at the same time. This isn't even physics - it's math. Basically what you said was [math]8 = \frac{16}{2}[/math] and then later that, [math]8 = \frac{8}{2}[/math]. (Same kinetic energy {8}, different momentum {8})

Ok, thinking in radians just makes my head hurt, but I need to get a grasp on this for something I am working on. So, let us assume we have a stationary object, object A. For the purposes of this exercise, we can consider it to be a point. Orbiting this object we have another point object, object B. Object B orbits at a distance 5,000 meters with a fixed velocity of 100 m/s. So the question is, how many radians per second is object B's orbital velocity. I already know: [math]V_o = 100 m/s[/math] [math]C_o = 2\pi \times 5000 m[/math] So would it just be a matter of finding the angle subtended by the arc traveled in one second, and converting that to radians?

I wasn't aware there was a debate. You're talking about two different things, and then comparing their velocities as if they were the same. 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_electricity#Electromagnetic_waves

Useless is a subjective term. I imagine someone freezing to death would find heat to be very useful indeed.

Supoosedly, they taste like cheese. I have yet to identify any kind of cheese that matches their flavor, however.

They get cheese nips? I'm kind of hurt. I really like cheese nips.

There a couple of ways you can check to see if a number is likely to be a prime. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primality_test Also, you can look at the Miller-Rabin primality test which actually proves if a number is composite (not prime). If the test fails, you've likely got a prime on your hands.

You can move them to Nirvana with a side trip to Purgatory for all I care. Math doesn't change, and it doesn't lie (unless you use it wrong). If the Kinetic Energy remains the same, then either BOTH the mass AND the momentum change, or neither does. You can't have it any other way if you expect the equations to balance.