Did you know that Nanowrimo is in three days? WELL NOW YOU DO. It is not going to be pretty, this November. >.<
For Halloween, apparently I am supposed to dress up as Christopher Robin, which basically means dressing in yellow and trying to look as short and short-haired as possible, I think:
except pants instead of shorts, because Curlyfryland is freaking cold on Halloween |
Ummmmm. Yeah.
Momo, Virgil, and I started writing a photosynthesis song today, inspired rather by Not Our Bio Teacher's cell respiration song. It's called "Plant," because it is to the tune of "Animal" and we think we're so clever.
And I think that's it.
(NANOWRIMO IS IN THREE DAYS DID YOU KNOW FFFFFFF)
xiy
Actually, if you go to college and study math, you learn that the only thing that works all the time is guessing. Getting a degree in math is half receiving training in making the right kinds of guesses and the rest we just make up.
ReplyDeleteAlso, about factoring, no there isn't a better way than guessing. The only method better than guessing would be giving a formula to compute the roots. We use the quadratic formula all the time; the cubic formula is known and practically never used; the quartic formula exists and almost nobody even remembers what it is; it's been proven that there isn't a formula for quintic or higher degree so guessing is your only option there. Also, to continue my comment from before, all math (at its core) is systematized guessing and checking---it's just we don't talk about the guesses that didn't pan out.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, I guess I'm just not a very math-y person, but it's nice to know that there's a reason for it all. :)
ReplyDeleteSigh -
ReplyDeleteHere's a Halloween Math fact for you - there are more - many many more equations that could never be factored than can.
In fact, choose a very simple case like the quadratics you're being drilled to death on. These probably look like ax^2 + bx + c = 0. Let's make this really nice a simple... let's only look at the ones where the coefficient of the quadratic term is 1 and b and c are nice friendly integers.
In other words, your job is to factor equations of the form:
x^2 + bx + c = 0 where b and c are integers by guessing and checking.
Mostly there is no answer.
Very few quadratic equations can be factored.
That is not to say that finding the roots of equations isn't really important and that a lot of very cool math hasn't centered around it - I'm just afraid that you are once again being taught math without being shown its soul.
Such a beautiful subject reduced to rote problems and memorization.
Sadly yours,
House's Dad