Well, it could happen that the nominator was zero also and he just thought that it was enough for the whole expression to be zero and forgot to check the denominator. That could have been okay if it just so happened that the fraction had zero as a limit, not a value, in that point.
This actually happened, and I turned out looking quite smart, even though I had no idea what the whole point of the calculation was. To be honest though, I went home and read it through afterwards.
Yes, indeed. But of course I was joking. Also: This way of "fooling myself" usually maeks me go home and read the book for real, just to know what the hell I was talking about.:)
The "effort trying to fake it" somehow always ends up with me learning something...
Hey, and have ONE thing that you look for to see if it's wrong. Constantly. Like dividing by zero. Odds are, it IS going to happen, as a mistake, at least once during a semester, and THAT is your moment to shine, baby! Even if you have NO idea what is going on, you DID notice that the lecturer tried to divide by zero - so raise your hand and gain instant respect by everyone in the room - which usually people which are themselves busy applying the smile and nod method, have no idea what's going on, but did notice that YOU found an error. And if he asks you about any detail, just say you aren't really sure but - that he's probably right - and put up an intense frown like you're thinking really hard. Odds are, he'll figure it out eventually, in which case you smile broadly and exclaim "exactly"!
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will
on a half pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away
half a cate of whiskey every day.
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
Hobbes was fond of his dram
and Réne Descartes was a drunken fart:
"I drink therefore I am".
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed!
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed!
I heard it was his cousin, and that she kind of took care of him in his later years, which was also a time when he started socializing a little. But what you say is true. Euler had a wife, for example, and THIRTEEN kids! Maybe that's more common than the bleak scenario I was talking about... and good god I hope so.
If you hadn't got married, what would have happened? Do you think you would have just continued on your streak? How did you actually feel back then? At some point I just think the existential despair of being alone gets the better of you. At that point it's either commit suicide or socialize. That's what makes we hit the town every weekend. I simply can't stand too much loneliness. Maybe some people simply have no need for company, it's just hard to imagine.
Then again maybe some people just concentrate harder on their work to try to forget? That kind of concentration can also make it harder for you to be social. Maybe it just spirals out of control and we get people who have to keep working to not feel depressed. What if those people are the best scientists? I couldn't compete with that, and frankly I wouldn't want to. Let's hope that's not the case...
Ok, so I drifted a little. Anyway, uh.. just anyway.
I'm not sure where to put this post, but has anyone thought about Frank Zappa as an example / counter-example?
Here we have the guy who was NOT on drugs - or alcohol - and is in my opinion the only one (at least in rock and roll) who has done the equivalent work of a scientific great.
He is the best examples of what a musician CAN accomplish if he's NOT on drugs. He released about sixty albums in his lifetime, more are being released after his death by his family, simply because he didn't have time to release all the stuff he RECORDED (which was, among other things, every concert he played - ever). He made contributions to rock'n'roll, jazz, fusion, classical music, every genre of pop music from the early sixties to the late eighties, he wrote social commentary that people still write thick books trying to analyse, he managed to merge styles of music as different as rock-opera and neo-classical - in the same song - and he left a generation of so heavily trained musicians that it is unbelievable... I am just beginning, but I won't bore you with more details. He was also the best guitarist in rock and roll. Don't give me that crap about Jimi Hendrix!;)
THAT is an example of what you can accomplish with not being on drugs. And don't tell me that it lacked the emotional dimension, creativity or entertainment value Aerosmith had. Comparing Aerosmith to Frank Zappa is like comparing solving quadratic equations to the theory of relativity. I don't know, maybe completing the square is neat - but it doesn't begin to compare to the other thing.
Oh, yes, so WINE is a drink for the smart and therefore scientists drink wine? Those guys probably have more REFINED taste-buds than the rest of us. Pfft. It's a long time I read something as snob as this post. Come on.
Seeing as the FSM created the universe drunk, he would probably have more empathy with those who drink alot. Which would mean that all the best scientists in history would have been alcoholics.
Also: How many scientists have not been pushed into obsession because lack of companionship? You know Newton never married and never had a girlfriend. He didn't have too many friends either I think. So could not some of his work have been created by a man that had nothing else to do? By someone who is desperately fighting the loneliness that comes creeping up anytime he closes the book?
I have written some of my best things (granted, I'm still just studying for a BS) on a saturday or a friday night. You simply have so much more uninterrupted time to get very heavily into something you are working on. The downside is, of course, loneliness.
Are you in the right line of work? I'm hiring for a heavy metal band. The work is hard but the pay's not good. Wanna join?
In the broader scope of the conversation: I can fully admit to being that spoilt brat you're all talking about - I'm living in Denmark. THAT is truly sweet.
Well, there are unsolved mysteries surrounding the digits of pi. The patterns they follow aren't really known. It is still not known weather they are uniformly-distributed. So we don't know them all, and we don't really know how they behave.
Compare that to the digits of 1/3 = 0.3333... They are pretty well known.
Weather pi is "unknown" or not is kind of an undefined question. By definition it is not. By the cool formulas we know how to get better approximations of it, it is not. By the behavior and distribution of its digits it IS.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, it could happen that the nominator was zero also and he just thought that it was enough for the whole expression to be zero and forgot to check the denominator. That could have been okay if it just so happened that the fraction had zero as a limit, not a value, in that point.
This actually happened, and I turned out looking quite smart, even though I had no idea what the whole point of the calculation was. To be honest though, I went home and read it through afterwards.
Yes, indeed. But of course I was joking. Also: This way of "fooling myself" usually maeks me go home and read the book for real, just to know what the hell I was talking about. :)
The "effort trying to fake it" somehow always ends up with me learning something...
Hey, and have ONE thing that you look for to see if it's wrong. Constantly. Like dividing by zero. Odds are, it IS going to happen, as a mistake, at least once during a semester, and THAT is your moment to shine, baby! Even if you have NO idea what is going on, you DID notice that the lecturer tried to divide by zero - so raise your hand and gain instant respect by everyone in the room - which usually people which are themselves busy applying the smile and nod method, have no idea what's going on, but did notice that YOU found an error. And if he asks you about any detail, just say you aren't really sure but - that he's probably right - and put up an intense frown like you're thinking really hard. Odds are, he'll figure it out eventually, in which case you smile broadly and exclaim "exactly"!
:)
There's a plenty of ways of looking smart.
am on ship on way to england stop have solved riemann hypothesis stop will give details on return stop
Given this information, can you prove Newton != Copernicus?
... I'm piggybacking as we speak!
:) Venlig hilsen!
But this is Denmark.
And on a side note: Guys, it isn't necessarily true! How did the parent get modded "insightful" or "informative"?
Don't forget the rest of them!
:-D
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will
on a half pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away
half a cate of whiskey every day.
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
Hobbes was fond of his dram
and Réne Descartes was a drunken fart:
"I drink therefore I am".
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed!
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed!
Ah, man, it warms my heart to read your post. :)
How long until our brain gets used to this signal just being that "blue widget" again and starts filtering it out?
You can't fool yourself for too long.
I heard it was his cousin, and that she kind of took care of him in his later years, which was also a time when he started socializing a little. But what you say is true. Euler had a wife, for example, and THIRTEEN kids! Maybe that's more common than the bleak scenario I was talking about... and good god I hope so.
If you hadn't got married, what would have happened? Do you think you would have just continued on your streak? How did you actually feel back then? At some point I just think the existential despair of being alone gets the better of you. At that point it's either commit suicide or socialize. That's what makes we hit the town every weekend. I simply can't stand too much loneliness. Maybe some people simply have no need for company, it's just hard to imagine.
Then again maybe some people just concentrate harder on their work to try to forget? That kind of concentration can also make it harder for you to be social. Maybe it just spirals out of control and we get people who have to keep working to not feel depressed. What if those people are the best scientists? I couldn't compete with that, and frankly I wouldn't want to. Let's hope that's not the case...
Ok, so I drifted a little. Anyway, uh.. just anyway.
Haha, I just came from the supermarket - where they are selling "fyodor" vodka! :)
Probably says something about that guy.
I'm not sure where to put this post, but has anyone thought about Frank Zappa as an example / counter-example?
;)
Here we have the guy who was NOT on drugs - or alcohol - and is in my opinion the only one (at least in rock and roll) who has done the equivalent work of a scientific great.
He is the best examples of what a musician CAN accomplish if he's NOT on drugs. He released about sixty albums in his lifetime, more are being released after his death by his family, simply because he didn't have time to release all the stuff he RECORDED (which was, among other things, every concert he played - ever). He made contributions to rock'n'roll, jazz, fusion, classical music, every genre of pop music from the early sixties to the late eighties, he wrote social commentary that people still write thick books trying to analyse, he managed to merge styles of music as different as rock-opera and neo-classical - in the same song - and he left a generation of so heavily trained musicians that it is unbelievable... I am just beginning, but I won't bore you with more details. He was also the best guitarist in rock and roll. Don't give me that crap about Jimi Hendrix!
THAT is an example of what you can accomplish with not being on drugs. And don't tell me that it lacked the emotional dimension, creativity or entertainment value Aerosmith had. Comparing Aerosmith to Frank Zappa is like comparing solving quadratic equations to the theory of relativity. I don't know, maybe completing the square is neat - but it doesn't begin to compare to the other thing.
I'm assuming you write in postscript.
Heh, I guess I had that one coming. But I do think your post was a little elitist, anyway. Unless you were joking of course.
Hehe, ornithologists drinking beer are more likely to fall down from trees, and therefore less likely to produce scientific papers.
Oh, yes, so WINE is a drink for the smart and therefore scientists drink wine? Those guys probably have more REFINED taste-buds than the rest of us. Pfft. It's a long time I read something as snob as this post. Come on.
I like microwave pizza. Does that make me stupid?
Seeing as the FSM created the universe drunk, he would probably have more empathy with those who drink alot. Which would mean that all the best scientists in history would have been alcoholics.
Oh, yes oh, yes oh, yes!
Also: How many scientists have not been pushed into obsession because lack of companionship? You know Newton never married and never had a girlfriend. He didn't have too many friends either I think. So could not some of his work have been created by a man that had nothing else to do? By someone who is desperately fighting the loneliness that comes creeping up anytime he closes the book?
I have written some of my best things (granted, I'm still just studying for a BS) on a saturday or a friday night. You simply have so much more uninterrupted time to get very heavily into something you are working on. The downside is, of course, loneliness.
Steve Ballmer?
Are you in the right line of work? I'm hiring for a heavy metal band. The work is hard but the pay's not good. Wanna join?
In the broader scope of the conversation: I can fully admit to being that spoilt brat you're all talking about - I'm living in Denmark. THAT is truly sweet.
A close friend of Tim Leary you say? Is THAT supposed to me trust him?
Is that it? Hope she liked it.
Well, there are unsolved mysteries surrounding the digits of pi. The patterns they follow aren't really known. It is still not known weather they are uniformly-distributed. So we don't know them all, and we don't really know how they behave.
Compare that to the digits of 1/3 = 0.3333... They are pretty well known.
Weather pi is "unknown" or not is kind of an undefined question. By definition it is not. By the cool formulas we know how to get better approximations of it, it is not. By the behavior and distribution of its digits it IS.