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dchoby98 · Post by **dchoby98** » Sat Feb 26, 2005 5:26 am

/me is a grad student in math

I do math to AVOID numbers. That's why we use x's and y's all the time. Thanks, guys.

TheSilverFox06 · Post by **TheSilverFox06** » Sat Feb 26, 2005 5:27 am

No kidding, I'm terrible at arithmetic and algebra. Just the other day, I made the assumption that 1/a + 1/b = 1/(a+b) on my physics homework. Last semester, one of my math tests didn't have a single number on it, except for the problem numbers.

zaudragon · Post by **zaudragon** » Sat Feb 26, 2005 6:22 am

FredAkbar wrote:Algebra 1 as a seventh grader? Not bad. That's what I did too, and now I'm one of only two kids in my high school class who are in Calculus. It's pretty cool, as is math itself of course

Well, Algebra 1 is too easy

I could be in Geometry!

But, I don't know everything…

And since I know more than the eighth graders, I did Trigonometric Ratios for fun

I also know imaginary numbers!

squareroot(i)=(i+1)/squaroot(2)

yay! And my Geometry friends don't know that

FredAkbar · Post by **FredAkbar** » Sat Feb 26, 2005 7:03 am

Neither did I

zaudragon · Post by **zaudragon** » Sat Feb 26, 2005 7:07 am

FredAkbar wrote:Neither did I

hehe, my dad taught me that!

Son of a Preacher Man · Sat Feb 26, 2005 1:19 pm

It makes sense though!

TheSilverFox06 · Post by **TheSilverFox06** » Sat Feb 26, 2005 2:32 pm

It does indeed make sense. If you square both sides, you get i.

sqrt(i)^2 = i
(i+1)^2/sqrt(2)^2 = (i^2 + 2i + 1)/2 = (-1 +2i +1)/2 = 2i/2 = i

Also, if memory serves me right, imaginaries usually aren't taught until algebra II, which didn't come until after geometry in my school. Also, you're not *really* taught about imaginary numbers at that point (thinks about complex Fourier series and Schrodinger's equation).

Newtylicious · Post by **Newtylicious** » Sat Feb 26, 2005 3:59 pm

Yeah, I did imaginary numbers in 7th grade also, my whole 'special' class did(30 of us did the first half of Alg I then). Someone just asked what happened if you got a negative in the radical(I think we were doing quadratics maybe?). And the teacher just went ahead and told us that it was an imaginary and gave us a brief explaination(though of course, only about 3 of us even began to grasp it)

But you should have taken geometry...I don't know about you guys, but geometry is so easy here(I'm in geometry honors even). You should have taken geometry zaudragon. Though, I may find it easy because I do all the homework in class, rather than pay attention. so no homework makes it easy. Then again, I never have homework in anything really.

Here we go Alg I -> Geo -> Alg II -> Precalc/Stats AP/Trig/etc

Son of a Preacher Man · Sat Feb 26, 2005 4:21 pm

Are there set modules that are common to all schools in the US then?

The only occasions we ever have common modules over here are exam periods at 16, 17 and 18 - but even then, there are different exam boards and stuff who set different content.

FredAkbar · Post by **FredAkbar** » Sat Feb 26, 2005 4:54 pm

I'm in Calculus and still I've hardly done anything with imaginary numbers

. Last year (trig/precalc) we did a little with complex numbers (a + bi) and graphing them (with the horizontal axis being the real number axis and the vertical axis being the imaginary number axis) but that's about it.

Son of a Preacher Man · Sat Feb 26, 2005 5:02 pm

FredAkbar wrote:graphing them (with the horizontal axis being the real number axis and the vertical axis being the imaginary number axis)

We spent ages on that. WHY?!

TheSilverFox06 · Post by **TheSilverFox06** » Sun Feb 27, 2005 1:46 am

Son of a Preacher Man wrote:WHY?!

Because imaginaries are just an orthogonal extension of real numbers. You can have even more dimensions of "imaginary" numbers as well, such as j and k.

air__devil · Post by **air__devil** » Sun Feb 27, 2005 2:09 am

TheSilverFox06 wrote:
Son of a Preacher Man wrote:WHY?!
Because imaginaries are just an orthogonal extension of real numbers. You can have even more dimensions of "imaginary" numbers as well, such as j and k.

don't forget e and i

Those are as imaginary as you can get!

axcess99 · Post by **axcess99** » Sun Feb 27, 2005 2:19 am

air__devil wrote:
TheSilverFox06 wrote:
Son of a Preacher Man wrote:WHY?!
Because imaginaries are just an orthogonal extension of real numbers. You can have even more dimensions of "imaginary" numbers as well, such as j and k.
don't forget e and i

Those are as imaginary as you can get!

um... e is a real number :-) approximately equal to 2.718281828459045

(it is actually equal to 1/0! + 1/1! + 1/2! + 1/3! + 1/4! + ...)

FredAkbar · Post by **FredAkbar** » Sun Feb 27, 2005 2:49 am

It's also equal to the limit as x approaches zero of (1 + 1/x)^x ...right? I think that's what I learned.

TheSilverFox06 · Post by **TheSilverFox06** » Sun Feb 27, 2005 3:15 am

That is correct. There are many other definitions of e, such as the exponential whose derivative is itself.

FredAkbar · Post by **FredAkbar** » Sun Feb 27, 2005 3:29 am

Oops, I actually meant the limit as x approaches infinity...hehe so I guess that's another one, eh?

carlj7 · Post by **carlj7** » Sun Feb 27, 2005 6:23 am

Son of a Preacher Man wrote:Are there set modules that are common to all schools in the US then?

The only occasions we ever have common modules over here are exam periods at 16, 17 and 18 - but even then, there are different exam boards and stuff who set different content.

In America, every state has its own laws about schools. In some states, all the schools do the same things; in other states, each school does something different. Plus, every state has a large number of private schools. On top of that, the Federal government will give state government money for schools, but only if the states promise to do certain things, like a bunch of testing for Bush's "No Child Left Behind Act." That law is interesting, because theoretically Republicans think that education should be left to the states, but they passed a law that increased the amount of Federal control over education. Meanwhile, Democrats want a more nationalized system but hate NCLB, because they don't want the money going to schools to be dependent on test results…

So, basically the only thing that all American students have an equal framework to be judged on are tests like the SAT, SAT II, ACT, etc. that are run by a private company called ETS. And basically everyone agrees that the tests suck anyway, but there's no alternative.

There, now you understand the US system. Easy huh?

Son of a Preacher Man · Sun Feb 27, 2005 11:53 am

carlj7 wrote:There, now you understand the US system. Easy huh?

Still more logical than the English system...
Cheers!

TheSilverFox06 · Post by **TheSilverFox06** » Sun Feb 27, 2005 2:58 pm

FredAkbar wrote:Oops, I actually meant the limit as x approaches infinity...hehe so I guess that's another one, eh?

It was my mistake too - it is indeed the limit as x approaches infinity. I didn't check it the first time; I was just like "yeah, that sounds right". I actually checked it this time, though

I, too, dislike the NCLB act. It rewards schools that only teach towards the test. There are some schools whose elementary schools will spend weeks on "how to take the test". They could be learning something that's actually mildly useful instead. I disagree with some other actions that Bush has taken on education as well, such as rewarding schools that teach abstinence-only in sex ed, even though those same schools teach outrageous lies about safe sex methods.