this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2025
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Science Memes

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Listen here, Little Dicky (lemmynsfw.com)
submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 81 points 5 days ago (3 children)

I found math in physics to have this really fun duality of "these are rigorous rules that must be followed" and "if we make a set of edge case assumptions, we can fit the square peg in the round hole"

Also I will always treat the derivative operator as a fraction

[–] [email protected] 64 points 5 days ago (3 children)

2+2 = 5

…for sufficiently large values of 2

[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 days ago

i was in a math class once where a physics major treated a particular variable as one because at csmic scale the value of the variable basically doesn't matter. the math professor both was and wasn't amused

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago (4 children)

Engineer. 2+2=5+/-1

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

I mean as an engineer, this should actually be 2+2=4 +/-1.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago

Statistician: 1+1=sqrt(2)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Computer science: 2+2=4 (for integers at least; try this with floating point numbers at your own peril, you absolute fool)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Freshmen engineer: wow floating point numbers are great.

Senior engineer: actually the distribution of floating point errors is mindfuck.

Professional engineer: the mean error for all pairwaise 64 bit floating point operations is smaller than the Planck constant.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

0.1 + 0.2 = 0.30000000000000004

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

comparing floats for exact equality should be illegal, IMO

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

pi*pi = g

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

units don't match, though

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

Found the engineer

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

I always chafed at that.

"Here are these rigid rules you must use and follow."

"How did we get these rules?"

"By ignoring others."

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

is this how Brian Greene was born?