this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 174 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (7 children)

What about plain old x = -10?

-10 ^ 2 = 100
-10 ^ 3 = -1000
-10 ^ 5 = -100000

[–] [email protected] 121 points 10 months ago

Isn't that the joke?

[–] [email protected] 67 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's what he wrote, I imagine.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It is, but with imaginary numbets

[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago
[–] [email protected] 46 points 10 months ago

i² = -1 so...

[–] [email protected] 28 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 35 points 10 months ago (1 children)

people being pedantic showoffs doesn't really register as humor for me, TBH

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

That's true, the OOP is being quite snarky with their comment on a post where someone's had a genuine basic doubt

[–] [email protected] 26 points 10 months ago

10 * i^2 is -10.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

That was my immediate thought too.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago
[–] [email protected] 100 points 10 months ago (2 children)

When all you have is an imaginary hammer, everything looks like a rotation around the imaginary unit circle.

Explanation of mathsx = -10, i = √-1 so i² = -1 and 10i²=-10

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Found the math but no explanation.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The squareroot of 100 is ±10.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (3 children)

The square root is always positive, but you can plug it into the quadratic formula to get the two possible values.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Okay, fine the square roots of 100 are ±10.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's not how the square root is defined.

You're confusing "square root of 100" with "the answer to x^2 = 100". These are different things.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Which is why I differentiated between square roots and the principle square root by saying the square roots instead of the square root on the second comment.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

so you came up with your own term to cover your mistake?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

No, I was being pedantic to appease the pedantic assholes.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

There's no reason to bring the quadratic formula into this. Square roots can be negative, but when talking about the square root it's normally assumed to be the principal square root, which is the positive one.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

IIRC, your spoilery “so” is the other way round. The right side is the definition, and the left-hand side a layman’s shorthand, as the root operator isn’t defined on negative numbers.

I might very well be wrong. My being a mathematician has been over for a while now, my being a pedantic PITA not though.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

I don't know enough to know how correct your pedantry is (technically or not), but to explain the meme it made sense to go through the symbols in the order you see them. I never got any points from the proof questions in exams anyway.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 10 months ago

that is a very long way to write -10

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (2 children)

What an extremely unnecessary explanation. As a math teacher I would have deducted points for this answer.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

"show your work"

Malicious compliance intensifies

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 44 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's because the explanation was about 10 times as complicated as it needs to be

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago

He is trolling with overcomplicating

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

No definition what values are suitable for x.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago (4 children)

x has to be -10, right? Or am I missing something?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Yeah, I think the point is that the person answering was wrong/over complicating. If x=10i, then x^2 would be -100 (or potentially -10 depending on what you think the ^2 is applied to).

[–] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago

They said x=10i^2, not 10i. Difference is it equals -10, and they chose not to simplify.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

They're correct, it's just overcomplicated as fuck in ways that are correct but completely irrelevant to the question.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Depends on what are the allowed values for x are. Real numbers, complexe numbers, binary or I made up my own numbers ;)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

The answer in the meme (10i^2) is -10

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Probably what they were going for, but there are literally an infinite number of exotic arithmetic spaces you could ask this question in. For example, x=10 works in any ring with a modulus greater than 100 and less than 1000.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

fortunately math problems are administered in the context of the class, so it will be pretty obvious that it's in the complex plane.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Therefore i¹⁰ = ln(-1)¹⁰/pi¹⁰ = -1

This is true but does not follow from the preceding steps, specifically finding it to be equal to -1. You can obviously find it from i²=-1 but they didn't show that. I think they tried to equivocate this expression with the answer for e^iπ^ which you can't do, it doesn't follow because e^iπ^ and i¹⁰ = ln(-1)¹⁰/pi¹⁰ are different expressions and without external proof, could have different values.