this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2024
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Math Memes

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Memes related to mathematics.

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1: Memes must be related to mathematics in some way.
2: No bigotry of any kind.

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

Why would alphabetic order be involved at all?

Because the ... notation effectively means: fill in the blanks. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipsis#In_mathematical_notation (or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iterated_binary_operation if you want more...)

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

Yes for numbers, which these are not.

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

So your argument is that in the list "a, b, c, ..., z" the "..." Bit could be anything and we have no way of knowing what's there and therefore the problem is unsolvable? Or what are you saying exactly?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Yes. The variables a, b, c, and z must have a stated correlation. Variable names do not implicitly have any relation between them. Ellipses work for numbers because a series of 1, 2, 3 ... 100 can be inferred using the rules of mathematics. A series of a, b, c ... z cannot; the series can only be inferred using the rules of the English language.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

so is the word "simplify". I guess we'll never know what they mean by that because if you pretend you don't speak English, then there's no way of knowing!

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

Right. Well, yeah, I guess your pedantic response is a lot more logical than the intended answer that other people have pointed out. Have a nice day!