• CalipherJones@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Well Pythagoras lived during the Greek era. Buildings like the Temple of Artemis were the greatest projections of power and grandeur the world had to offer at the time. Those great structures would’ve dwarfed anything seen out in the country. The only way those buildings could ever be erected is with the help of mathematics.

        Furthermore mathematical truths are about as true as anything can be in the world. A triangle’s angles are always perfectly in harmony for instance. Way back when, when the world was much darker and more chaotic, those mathematical truths must’ve seemed like a great light in the darkness.

        Mathematics is applicable truth.

  • Valmond@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Computer programming books … Lol we don’t print them any more, they’d be obsolete before hitting the shelves.

    • eronth@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 days ago

      Do be fair, that’s less because the fundamentals behind programming are changing and more because the specific implementations are changed all the damn time.

      • Valmond@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Yep, I got that “introduction to algorithms” (1100 pages tightly written, love it) and it still holds up ofc. I should have stayed in uni…

  • kamen@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Mathematics teacher: That textbook was written thousands of years ago, and it is still as useful and relevant as ever, but I want you to buy this one I co-authored instead for the mere sum of $120, otherwise you won’t pass.

      • mothersprotege@lemm.ee
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        4 days ago

        I took an environmental science class in college, and the professor was a former president of Shell. As part of the curriculum, we had to read his book, Why we Hate the Oil Companies. Predictably, it’s a corporate non-apologia, which—hilariously—completely avoids engaging with why we actually hate the oil companies.

        • emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works
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          3 days ago

          environmental science class … the professor was a former president of Shell

          Do they also invite Nazis to teach the elective in human rights?

          • mothersprotege@lemm.ee
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            3 days ago

            Iirc, it was an energy/environment focus, so it was all about analyzing and comparing different energy sources wrt their usefulness, feasability, environmental impact, etc. This was in Houston, so the oil industry plays a huge role in the local economy, and funds the university endowments.

            But yeah, the whole thing was pretty farcical.

        • FireIced@lemmy.super.ynh.fr
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          4 days ago

          Did people stand up to call the bullshit? I guess in this kind of situation you feel threatened that if you talk, you get penalized heavily

          • mothersprotege@lemm.ee
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            3 days ago

            Not that I recall. I didn’t know anyone else in the class, and I don’t remember anything coming up in the class group chat. I did get quite heated with him at a couple of points, but I’m pretty sure he still gave me an A.

      • kamen@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        I admit I exaggerated a bit. It hasn’t happened to me, but I’ve had some teachers that strongly suggested buying their textbooks and frowned if you didn’t.

      • SpraynardKruger@lemm.ee
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        4 days ago

        Not the original commenter, but I briefly had one professor in college that did that (their book was $50, though). It was an elective course for me, fortunately. I was able to switch for a different class that fit the same requirement without being forced to buy a book the professor wrote.

    • Michal@programming.dev
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      4 days ago

      Since you made the claim, the onus of proof is on you. Go on, it’ll be interesting to see your proof.

    • Dicska@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Nah mate, it was already in existence by last Tuesday afternoon and there is no way for you to disprove it.

  • Gladaed@feddit.org
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    4 days ago

    Wrong for physics. Models to describe reality don’t magically become wrong just because a model with better predictive power is discovered. Most old models are special cases of newer ones.

    • InputZero@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Yeah, Newton wasn’t just a science bitch who is wrong, sometimes. His equations are the special case of General Relativity when acceleration is very low. Which is the world we live in.

    • mlg@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      That was probably inspired by the USA’s crappy national curriculum system of forcing kids to learn and use the lattice method which is 100% some sort of scam to make it look like math illiterate children are passing class and failing upwards.

      I mean seriously, we’ve been using base 10 arab system for a millenia, but you’re trying to tell me the department of education came up with a better method of drawing a damn chi square matrix abomination that makes even the two millenia old roman numeral system look good in comparison.

      • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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        4 days ago

        To be fair, the first 100 pages of that was justifying the set theory definition for what numbers are. The following two hundred papers are proving that a process of iterative counting we call addition functions in a consistent and useful way, given the set theory way of defining numbers. Once we get to that point, 1+1 is easy. Then we get to start talking more deeply about iteration as a process, leading to considering iterating addition (aka multiplication), iterating multiplication (aka exponents), etc. But that stuff is for the next thousand pages.

        Remember, 0 is defined as the amount of things in the empty set {}. 1 is defined as the amount of things in a set containing the empty set {{}}. Each following natural number is defined as the amount of things in a set containing each of the previous nonnegative integers. So for example 2 is the amount of things in a set containing the empty set and a set containing the empty set {{}, {{}}}, 3 is the amount of things in a set containing the empty set, a set containing the empty set, and a set containing the empty set and a set containing the empty set {{}, {{}}, {{}, {{}}}}, etc. All natural numbers are just counting increasingly recursively labeled nothing. Welcome to math.

    • Gladaed@feddit.org
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      4 days ago

      Wrong. Good look fooling around without algebra for years. New methods make old maths easy.

        • Gladaed@feddit.org
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          4 days ago

          No sarcasm. Being able to use numbers, integrals and derivatives makes a huge amount of maths easy. Exponential function and it’s relatives are so handy. (Sin, Cos, Tan, Cot, log).

          The Greeks didn’t have any of that to do their math.

      • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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        4 days ago

        …and even newer methods make old math insanely complicated, but much more generalized. Like building definitions for things like numbers and basic arithmetic using set theory.

    • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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      4 days ago

      My favorite way to connect people with academia is pointing out how recently zero was invented because even the most reluctant “I don’t know math” person understands zero these days.

      • ultrafastsloth@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        Can you really understand zero? I mean, I get what it represents, but I still sometimes struggle to understand its usage…like, you can’t divide with zero thats for sure, but did you know you can divide a number with a really small number (like an infinitely small number) and you get a really large number (like infinitely large)? So, in that special space, if you suddenly replace “0” with a “number-so-close-to-zero-it-can-smell-it” feel free to divide and conquer, and get infinity.

        Oh, and sometimes, if you feel like math is letting you down, remember, you can always use positive and negative zeroes, so your math-thing can now work!

        • Wolf@lemmy.today
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          4 days ago

          I don’t understand why you can’t divide by zero.

          If you turn it into a word problem 10/1 could be stated as “If you have 10 things and put them in a bucket, how many things do you have in the bucket?”

          10/2 becomes “If you have 10 things, and and put an equal amount of them in two different buckets, how many things are in each bucket?”

          So, wouldn’t 10/0 become “If you have 10 things, and don’t put any of them into the bucket, how many things are in the bucket?”

          I’m bad at math, go easy on me.

          • skisnow@lemmy.ca
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            3 days ago

            The fact that there’s no buckets means that you can’t then usefully draw any further conclusions about the ratio of buckets to things. In your first two examples we can take the results and use them to work out further things like how much might the buckets weigh, what happens if we add more buckets or more things, etc.

            In the divide by zero answer, we know nothing about the buckets, and the number of things becomes meaningless. But worse of all is that it’s easy to hide this from the unwary, which is why you occasionally see “proofs” online that 1=2, which rely on hiding divide-by-zero operations behind some sneaky algebra.

            When we say we “can’t” divide by zero, we mean ok you can divide by zero, but you’ll get a useless answer that leaves you at a mathematical dead end. Infinity isn’t reversible, or even strictly equal to itself.

            • Wolf@lemmy.today
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              3 days ago

              I think I get it, thanks for taking the time to explain.

              With 10/2 there are two buckets, and 10/1 there is 1, so with 10/0 I was wrong to phrase it as there is a ‘bucket with nothing in it’, it should be ‘there is no bucket, so you can’t put anything in the bucket, even if you wanted to.’ Right?