I listened to NPR talk about math last night.
there was an interesting blurb about Euler's

pi = circumference/diameter
i = square root (-1)
e = natural log

e^i(pi) = -1
wow
math is beautiful

 

i feel stupid.

 

If you rewrite it as:

e^(pi*i) + 1 = 0

you have a simple equation that contains the five most important constants in mathematics, the three most important operations (addition, multiplication, and exponentiation), the single most important relation (equality), and nothing else.

Gauss is said to have remarked that if this formula weren't immediately obvious, the reader would never become a first-class mathematician.

wow

 

Anyone who does not understand mathematics is not completely human. At best, he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.

- Heinlein

(This quote - incorrectly attributed to Isaac Asimov, and possibly containing "wear shoes" and "bathe" in the wrong order - was on the door of the office of one of the mathematics professors at UCLA many, many years ago. It may still be there.)

 

heheh i feel smart that i faintly remembered the log and pi

 

that was a test question I had on a Calc or Pre- Calc test last year. It was supposed to be kind of a trick question, but Im glad I got it right.

 

i'm not engineering... so i dont really study math, its not exactly my forte... only math i have to use if for conversions... things like metric to english convertions and vice versa, body weight to amount of medication ratio... etc...

 

If he attributed it to Asimov, he was way off. This is a classic Robert A. Heinlein quote.

 

I'll make the correction straightaway.

Thanks!

 

The only thing I know about what you wrote is that if it's a problem, what's in the paranthesis is done first, and I only know that because Bill told me a matter of hours ago.

Beautiful? Not so much.