How to perfectly bisect a line segment.

Isn’t this needlessly over complicating the problem?

Why not just draw two circles of radius the total length of the line centred at A and B (the same as the first step here), then draw a line between the intersections of those circles?

when the book says the proof is trivial

Afraid of math? Watch this!

hi! i saw that you go to the University of Warwick and i was wondering how you were enjoying it? i'm looking into applying there so i want to see how students like it :) is the course work really hard? i mean i want a challenge but i dont want to be like drowning in work all the time. Also, how is the social life? on a typical weekend what do you do? thanks :)
Anonymous

Hello there, yeah I’m doing maths at Warwick :)

In short, I’m loving it here. It is just was I hoping university would be like and I’m really happy. I would recommend it to anybody. If you’re not studying maths then this next bit will be a little less applicable as other subjects do things differently but it’ll still be broadly true.

The work is really hard. However, if you are the caliber of student who is applying to Warwick then you’ll be able to do it. Assignments certainly don’t take up all of my time but they are do form a reasonable portion of what I have to do.

So long as you finish work somewhat ahead of the deadline and try to work in groups then it shouldn’t be too stressful. You won’t be ‘drowning’ but certainly ‘swimming up stream’ most of the time :)

The social life at Warwick is great. It’s common to be going out on Wednesday nights rather than the weekends but a lot of people do go out Saturday nights. The best way to be socialising is with as sports club. Every Wednesday sports clubs go circling in the SU which is a lot of fun drinking games run by your club’s social secretaries then go to a club afterwards. It sounds dumb at first but it’s the best way to go out.

There are also a lot of places to go out in Leamington and a few in Covntry so you’re never really hard up for choice.

I hope that answers some of your questions, if you have any more don’t hesitate to ask.

Astronaut readjusts to life back on Earth

> Don’t give him a baby for a while.

HE GRABS THE CUP BUT THEN HE DROPS THE PEN 0.0003 SECONDS LATER

AND HE LOOKS UP AT THE CEILING INSTEAD OF AT THE GROUND WHEN HE CAN’T FIND THEM

i need to watch later omfg

i made an ungodly noise oh my god
he looks so done with gravity

Where can I buy a /Menger sponge? I want to fill one with water - could you?
Anonymous

I believe you can pick one up at the Cantor store, I think he has the whole set! Julia works there, and Sierpiński did the interior decorating (but he mostly focused on the carpet). Mandelbrot might also stock a few but he keeps a dragon about so your best bet is probably Koch's snow dome (if it hasn't blown a gasket).

I can fill one with water, a 10cm x 10cm x 10cm Menger sponge will take one litre. If you’re looking for it to be repainted however, I’m afraid I can’t help, just can’t be done you see.

Oh hi maths, didn’t see you there.

Warwick Freshers!

Warwick freshers, come down to the sports fair in the sports centre tomorrow between 10:30am and 5:30pm.

Come and find out about all of the sports they have to offer particularly Trampolining. We are in main hall so if you are interested in a sport that is great fun and great exercise come along.

We have free taster sessions in Weeks 1 and 2. We cater from all abilities from those who have never bounced before, through those who did a little recreationally, up to competitive trampolinists.

The sport and the socials are great fun so come along and say hello!

via pbsdigitalstudios and laughingsquid:

Bohemian Gravity and a cappella version of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”

Brilliant. Although now I’m waiting for the “volcano version” where “MAMAAAAA” becomes “LAVAAAAAA. OOooooOOOooo!”

Quantum Queen! Brilliant way to start the day. McGill University master’s student Timothy Blais turned his thesis on three-dimensional gravity into a rock opera cover tune. He has also apparently learned to clone himself.

When you consider that Brian May is an actual astrophysicist and Freddie is named for the closest planet to the sun, this just gets better.

I mean…the ratio of work done on it to number of people who can truly appreciate it has never been lower for a YouTube video…ever. That isn’t to say that you won’t love this. I did, and I had no idea what the frak he was talking about 90% of the time.

Interesting topic.

Def invented. No doubt abt it. Thats why it only works like 1% of the time for real life situations. Its pure black magic when it does work!

I disagree. I believe that there are universal law and truths and that mathematics is how we interpret these laws. Take, for instance, the Pythagorean Theorem. It is true universally that if you take any right angled triangle and put a square on each of its sides then the two smallest can be cut up so they are the same size as the largest.

$$a^2+b^2=c^2$$ is our more elegant way of expressing that. I see these two things as being identical and seeing as the former was true before mankind even evolved, I think that we discovered $$a^2+b^2=c^2$$.

Mathematics is the language of everything. Some say that one invents a language but I disagree. I think we invent notation for algebra, or calculus, or any other topic but the underlying systems already existed.

This isn’t exactly a Platonist or non-Platonist view but it definitely leans more heavily toward the Platonist idea. Derek says he is a non-Platonist and it give him more freedom. My counterpoint is that thinking as an explorer rather than an inventor isn’t restrictive when the world you’re exploring is limitless.

Also, the reason for the refusal to accept new concepts such as irrationals, or negatives, or zero isn’t to do with Platonism. Believing in an underlying structure doesn’t mean we believe we know everything about it. The reason new idea take so long to pervade the culture of mathematicians is that humans are reluctant to change by nature.

It’s the idea that “if something isn’t broken, don’t fix it” that isn’t the fault of Platonists.

Why is ‘x’ the unknown?

Why is it that the letter $$x$$ is the symbol for the unknown? Short answer:

You can’t say sh in Spanish!

As with a lot of maths, science, and engineering it was originally thought up by the Persians, Arabs, and the Turks in the 1st or 2nd century CE. So when it came to translating these Arabic texts to Spanish (where they first came to Europe) they had some difficulties as not all Arabic sounds had characters in Spanish.

One of these is the character ش (sheen) making the English ‘sh’ sound. It is also the first character of the word شيء (shay’) meaning something. The definite form of this is: الـشيء (al shay’) meaning the (unknown) something.

This phrase appeared a lot in mathematical texts (unsurprisingly). But when is came to Spanish they had nothing to translate it to because Spanish does not have the ‘sh’ sound. So they decided, as a convention, that is should have the ‘ck’ sound and borrowed Greek letter $$\chi$$.

When these texts came to be translated into the common European text Latin their $$\chi$$ became the Latin letter $$x$$. Once this material was in Latin, it formed the basis of mathematics textbooks  for the next 600 years.

So there you have it, $$x$$ is the go to symbol for the unknown because the Spanish don’t have a ‘sh’ sound.

Source: Terry Moore TED Talk [x]

Plz someone help. I’ve checked my answer on numerous sites to be correct, but the hw website tells me that it’s wrong.

The problem is: Rationalise the denominator.

$\frac{\sqrt{11}+\sqrt{13}}{2}.$

So we start by multiplying the numerator and denominator by $$\sqrt{11}-\sqrt{13}$$. We can do this because

$\frac{\sqrt{11}+\sqrt{13}}{2}\times\frac{\sqrt{11}-\sqrt{13}}{\sqrt{11}-\sqrt{13}}=\frac{\sqrt{11}+\sqrt{13}}{2}\times 1.$

So let try it.

$\frac{\sqrt{11}+\sqrt{13}}{2}\times\frac{\sqrt{11}-\sqrt{13}}{\sqrt{11}-\sqrt{13}}=\frac{\left(\sqrt{11}+\sqrt{13}\right)\times\left(\sqrt{11}-\sqrt{13}\right)}{2\times\left(\sqrt{11}-\sqrt{13}\right)}.$

Expanding the top gives

$\frac{\left(\sqrt{11}+\sqrt{13}\right)\times\left(\sqrt{11}-\sqrt{13}\right)}{2\times\left(\sqrt{11}-\sqrt{13}\right)}=\frac{\sqrt{11}^{2}+\sqrt{11}\sqrt{13}-\sqrt{11}\sqrt{13}-\sqrt{13}^{2}}{2\times\left(\sqrt{11}-\sqrt{13}\right)}.$

Which will simplify to

$\frac{11-13}{2\times\left(\sqrt{11}-\sqrt{13}\right)}.$

Leaving our final answer (after expanding the bottom)

$\frac{-2}{2\sqrt{11}-2\sqrt{13}}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{13}-\sqrt{11}}.$

I hope that helps.