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Tattoos For the Math and Science Geek?
An anonymous reader writes "I've been thinking of getting a sleeve of math and science tattoos for quite a while now. With the money saved up, the only question remaining is, what equations/ideas should I get? I know for certain that I'm going to include some of Maxwell's equations, and definitely Ohm's Law. So, if you were going to put a tribute to the great math and science minds on your body forever, which ones would you choose?"
Personally, I've always enjoyed the beauty of Euler's identity, any form of Gaussian (normal) distribution which has a standard form here and entropy in regards to information theory. Of course, these are just personal favorites -- the last two because I am a computer scientist with so much college work hinging on them. You probably have personal favorites in chemistry or physics or another field even. Honestly, the loan formula is probably one of the most widely used and life changing formulas in the United States today -- especially given the recent financial crisis. I think it would be best for you to draw up your own formulas in a geometric display rather than someone else's symbols. I suppose that would require extreme precision on the end of the artist and also introduce interesting problems with the elasticity of your skin ... but I'm one for originality especially if you're about to mark yourself in a relatively permanent way.
My work here is dung.
It is better to tattoo P=NP, because you still can modify it later, if the opposite gets proven (just strike trough the equality symbol).
You definitely want Quaternions and Euler Angles:
The story behind Quaternions justifies permanent ink if any math theorem ever did: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternion
Cubum autem in duos cubos, aut quadratoquadratum in duos quadratoquadratos, et generaliter nullam in infinitum ultra quadratum potestatem in duos eiusdem nominis fas est dividere cuius rei demonstrationem mirabilem sane detexi. Hanc BRACCHIUMis exiguitas non caperet.
with one small change...
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
Get a full sleeve of the Mandelbrot set drawn with (literally) painstaking detail and accuracy. That should keep you and your tattoo artist busy for a while.
This sig has been stolen. Return it to its original user for a reward.
OK, yes, they hurt. That's true.
As far as endangering your health, it means you're going to the wrong damned shop. Any tattoo place that doesn't have an autoclave, and single-use needles should cause you to flee. I've never seen an artist not using latex gloves, not using sterile gear, and not using ink in little disposable cup that get tossed when they're done. Any modern shop is actually very clean, and if it isn't, don't go there.
As to being purely superficial, lots of people get tattoos that have a strong meaning to them (and, admittedly, lots don't). Some people get tattoos so that other people can see them and say "wow, he's got a tattoo, cool". Others get them entirely for themselves -- you can't see any of mine unless I want them to be seen. You're making absurd generalizations -- if 40% of Gen-Xers are sporting ink, there's almost no generalization you can accurately make about why people get them.
Somehow I knew a story about tattoos on Slashdot would trot out a bunch of people who know absolutely nothing on the topic. Now everybody gets to make categorical statements they can't support with anything but opinion.
Not everything outside of your experience is bad, or stupid. Just something you don't know about.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
A guy that I once met had a tattoo of a Smith Chart. Smart RF guy. Definitely dedicated to the field. ;)
Sounds like you've never gotten a tattoo. Before you get one you build up all this inherent meaning and long-term significance to the tattoo. Afterwards, you realize that it's just a cool picture (or phrase, whatever) that you wanted. Even if times and tastes change it's a cool link to who you were back when you got it.
And I guess this is the important distinction between scientists and engineers. Whereas scientists will care about if an equation holds near the center of a black hole, the engineer is willing to define such scenarios as out of scope. The scope for scientists is unlimited, the scope for engineers depends on the product.
And anon specifically asked for math and science geekery, so you've got a good point. If you want a scientific tattoo, stay away from Ohms law. If you want an engineering tattoo, go for it, get it done, and close the ticket.
You should tattoo pi * 1337%
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
he should get P=NP above the four knuckles of one hand, and the strike-through version on the other four knuckles
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
Well... I guess you can always start with 3.14 and keep adding decimals with time, as you feel more confident about having tattoos.
Note that the employer is breaking federal law if 'x' is:
States have innumerable laws such as can't make hiring, firing, compensation, layoff, transfer, training, benefits, retirement, or promotion decisions based on:
So clearly employees do have recourse for discrimination. Your "a job is a privilege not a right" is about a hundred years late.
Also, yes the first amendment only applies to congress (and state governments from the 14th amendment) but the question here isn't of law, it's of whether something is right or wrong. Freedom of speech is the defining principle of American culture and law, and its violation is rightfully greeted with disgust.
He's making a joke about how it's regarded as incorrect. However, he doesn't really know what's he's talking about ;) The Brontosaurus is widely held to not exist, by the non-paleontologist community. There are two reasons: The first and most commonly held reason is that the original Brontosaurus reconstruction was a composite, and got the head pretty wrong. However, this was resolved a long time ago, so unless his tattoo from the 90's is from the 1890's, I'm sure he got the head right. (Besides which, creating composite reconstructions when bones are missing is an acceptable practice in the field, so long as you acknowledge this fact when you publish! Brontosaurus is not the first, nor the last, dinosaur to have inaccurate reconstructions at some point. Many dinosaurs even today are best-guess composites). So, though the Brontosaurus might not have looked like the earliest drawings (from 100 years ago!) it still existed. The second is an issue of taxonomy. Brontosaurus's original scientific name was Brontosaurus Excelsus. However, in 1903 it was argued that it's not different enough from the Aptosaurus genus to get it's own genus. So, the scientific name was changed to Aptosaurus Excelsus, instead. However, Brontosaurus was already in the lexicon. So, that became its common name. Within the field, Brontosaurus is an accepted synanym, though the scientific name is preferred (as always). Nobody would laugh at my ignorance if I claimed to own a cat, rather than the "correct" term "felis cattus", though in a scientific paper the scientific name would be preferred. In 1989 there was a bit of a stink over the USPS putting a "Brontosaurus" on a stamp. People said it promote scientific illiteracy to put the wrong name on the stamp. However, this is no more incorrect than putting a Bald Eagle labeled "Bald Eagle" (rather than "Haliaeetus leucocephalus") on a stamp. Outside of a scientific settings, there's nothing wrong with using the common name of a species. (And, in fact, Brontosaurus Excelsus is still an accepted synonym for the scientific name). Even in a scientific setting, it's usually not frowned upon to use the common name, once you've used the scientific name to make it clear what species you are writing about. One might put "felis cattus (cat)" and from then on refer to them as cats, without complaint.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Depends what two weeks of the year you are there. And what type of "farm" it is.
From what I've seen, even if you do 10,000 acres of grain (be it corn, wheat, beans, etc) there are DEFINITELY times of the year when you don't do nuthin.
Of Course, the planting season and the harvest season are pretty busy (24x7 if you can).
But, if all you do is grain, there are some times when the most difficult thing you do is going to your favorite breakfast joint to drink coffee and tell tall tales.
The hard kind of farming is when you deal with livestock. Those kinds of farms.... Yeah. It stinks. Literally and figuratively. Having livestock makes it hard to get away on vacation - ever, it's a dawn to dusk type of career. No, I'm not a farmer, but I live in farm country and I have a lot of friends who are farmers or grew up on farms. Most grain farmers have some sort of livestock though, from what I've seen. Until they want to slow down when they get old, then they sell off the livestock. Yes farming is hard, but it isn't torture, and it can be very profitable.
Flappinbooger isn't my real name