#higher math

[captain-johanssons-wooden-ear]

I am offended by this picture.

I mean, let's consider a 'child' being any human being in between the ages of 0 and 18. 18 years=6,570 days (more or less, I did not take into account leap days)

For 1 child (just a day short of 18 years old since at that day the child=adult) sold for the price of $3,733,- 6,570 days of living would result in giving you a grand result of $1.76 (actually 1.7599785) of money-back-per-day. If you manage to raise your child on anything less than $1.76 per then this is a good deal. If not, you'll turn a severe loss.

However, a newborn is worth $3,733,- minus $1.76 per day of its existence.

It would be great if I knew how to make graphs showing the optimal buy/sell point of profit vs investment, considering lifespan etc. maybe one day I will.

Anyway.

While this seems a good offer I don't think selling 3 of your kids at the same time is as profitable as selling them one by one.

I mean: 1 kid = max $3,733,- which seems reasonable depending on how much energy you spent on raising your kid. Remember that you will have to stay under $1.76 per day for this offer to be even remotely profitable.

Two kid would give you max $6.164,- which is a nice sum but only boils down to $3,082,- per child; a net value decrease of $651,-. You'd have to raise your 2 children on $1.07 per day, or $0,53 per child.

But 3 kids? That only results in an average yield of max $2,576,66 PER CHILD! That's only feasible if you manage to raise you children for $0,88 per day (FOR ALL THREE). I'm sorry (not sorry) but how much do you think children cost to raise, hmm?

If you don't have a shady maternity ward at your disposal I guess that an orphinarium could do the trick or maybe a very careless elementary school but honestly I wouldn't bother accepting this offer.

If you want to sell your children, sell them one by one and make sure you sell them asap. Near-adult children will result in a net loss unless you manage to raise them on a steady diet of pebbles and belly button lint. It also shows that I have way too much spare time on my hands.

[sumayasoara]

Question is easy but I don't know the answers ••••••

[themathblogofsashanova]

September 6, 2022: My Post to Coursera's Constructivism in STEM Class (I pulled in my previous blog on mathematical notation for inspiration)

Standstills in Mathematics Education: Getting Past the Intimidation of Mathematical Notation

In this paper, I will discuss Two Conceptions of Mathematical Notation by Anna Sfard at the University of Jerusalem. The environment in which the use of operational versus structural understandings of mathematical notation were used was a secondary school environment. Specifically for this paper, this secondary school constituted 96 students, ages 14-17. They were asked to “translate four simple word problems into an equation”. They were also “asked to come up with verbal prescriptions (algorithms) for calculating the solutions of the same problem”, respectively. Finally, the environment is one where the notion of concept is just developing. Operational proceduralism, or the use of the program, is the earlier stage of development that is installed as an avoidance mechanism according to the hypothesis of Sfard as a substitute for the nonverbal, spatial crystallized concepts behind mathematics. Computer programs often supplant symbolic algebraic notation for the students, who have trouble understanding the full static picture of “operations of the named sort occurring in all pasts, presents, and futures” represented by the mathematical notation. Therefore, the only further characteristic is an avoidance of the next developmental stage, a stage where many students often get stuck (including myself). 

The learning environment for the student must be avoidant for a reason. From my interaction with students in my extensive experience as a math educator, I know that avoidance in mathematics often comes from insufficient understanding. As these students are clearly still in the procedural explication/operational stage of understanding mathematics (they are still in the maze running it out), they have not yet themselves devised the full concept of the complete map of the system of many of the algebraic symbols. Therefore, though the symbols may be used, they are still trying to conceive of them verbally. We hear such understandings when math is compared to a language. However, we can see that math is explicitly stated to be nonverbal in the following; “Italians and Arabs in the 1600’s used ‘syncopated’ or verbal descriptions of functions up to that point, at which point a transition to symbolic algebra [which therefore is specifically and definitively nonverbal] began.” Slowly the transition from word to function, function and its product to operation, and operation to atemporal spatial representation of a “crystallized” function begins. What is often left behind in teaching, according to Sfard–being in particular an opinion with which I professionally concur–is the constructivity of the situation. Notations are presented erroneously in two ways, as 1) frozen, perfect facts and 2) as verbal statements. Both of these are in error. Notations are often still heated “under the hood”, where the name of the representation is still having its analytic “gerrymandered constituencies” voting self-elements in and out in the halls of mathematics according to their comprehensive powers when put into rigorous practice. 

Additionally, verbal statements usually are these very analytical definitions that are verbal and therefore do not challenge the student to engage in the nonverbal, spatial reasoning that makes symbolic reasoning so difficult. Essentially, the issue here is students do not know there is a sort of “code switching” going on in learning types, and therefore think their verbal comprehensive mechanisms are inadequate, when instead teachers should be teaching nonverbal/spatial through visuals like the unit circle, physical puzzles such as Hanayama lock puzzles, and other methods that introduce this type of reasoning. Therefore, to improve the environments for conceptual, representative, and symbolic understanding, procedural/algorithmic understandings should slowly be transitioned out of support and replaced with symbolic/spatial/visual reasoning. This means creating environments that are visually and symbolically rich, emphasizing maps as third order representation, like concept maps, electoral maps, or even watching auctions or real estate price changes in real time. In addition, physical puzzles like Hanayama brand lock-and-key type puzzles are very much encouraged. 

By emphasizing the development instead of the “immediate perfect comprehension” of mathematical symbols, such immediate comprehension of words can be expected of words but not of “named crystallized functions”. Once this is established as being the nature of a symbol in a developmentally patient and educated manner, students can begin to form the correct understanding and mode of approaching mathematical notation. They will stop being so frightened, scared, and without tools when they know their verbal reasoning is not insufficient, but simply the wrong mental position for the task. Specifically, classrooms must be designed to acknowledge the verbal shared ground, incubate from within the operational dance, and fly up with a freed a novel conception into the symbolic view constitutive of the mathematical heights.

Works Cited

Sfard, Anna. (1987). Two conceptions of mathematical notions: Operational and structural. Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference for the Psychology of Mathematics Education. 3. 

[how-am-i-gonna-survive]

Y’know that meme phrase ‘And then Satan said “put the alphabet in math”’ ? Yeah, that one?

Well, as if the English alphabet in math wasn’t enough

Calculus 4 out here throwing in a few random Greek letters because we obviously need more

And now, thanks to linear algebra (also physics), I can literally write out the entire Greek alphabet on command

I may not know what they actually mean or sound like in Greek but fuck damn I know them

Yes I am gonna type it all out to help myself remember sorry

ε - physics constant, algebraic variable

ρ - physics variable

τ - specific physics variable, algebraic variable

υ - variable

θ - angle! always!

ι - algebraic variable

ο - physics variable

π - pi

α - angle, or algebraic scalar

σ - physics variable, algebraic variable

Σ - sum

δ - partial derivative

Δ - CHANGE also slope

φ - angle usually or physics constant

η - specific physics variable

ξ -physics constant or sometimes variable

Κ - physics constant(s)

λ - eiganvalue also specific physics variable

ζ - specific physics variable

χ - variable

ψ - specific physics variable

ω - angle or physics constant

β - angle usually or scalar constant

ν - variable or vector

μ - e-6

[janothar]

*asks you about higher maths in magic*

Ok *cracks knuckles* I’m going to do this is little bits, because otherwise I’ll get distracted by explaining the math, and will hope that people give followup questions with a bit more specificity.  And as I said in those tags, most of this will be Jewish magick, and will be rather inappropriate for use by most goyim.  Let’s just start with one from logic that uses one of the least understood theorems among non-mathematicians.

So there is a theorem by Godel (who was not Jewish, but this whole thing would be inappropriate as some concepts from Kabbalah will appear in broad strokes) that says that, within any axiomatic system strong enough to contain Peano arithmetic (just think of this as meaning you can do the normal things with numbers) then there are statements that can neither be proved nor disproved within the system.  He proved it by encoding statements as numbers (which can be read as an advanced form of Gematria) and finding numbers that encode statements about themselves, making the number in some sense (in this system) infinitely complex.  Now, the magic/Jewish stuff, would be that there isn’t just one name of G-d in Judaism and particularly in Jewish mysticism.  And some of these names are very, very long.  To me, this suggests that a properly extended gematric system, one that handles very large numbers, should assign a value of a Godel number to the name of G-d.

[thedaily-beer]

Dogfish Head’s Higher Math (Picked up at Whole Foods in Tustin). A 1 of 4. On paper this sounds amazing and complex. In the glass, it is discordant and weird in the worst way. Perhaps some will like it more, but the light fruit juice qualities, the chocolate malt notes, tart cherries, and earthiness in the body are all quite weird together. The finishes is pretty boozy (this is 17% after all), but can’t cut through all the disparate notes in the body, and it leaves your palate confused. I typically like weird things. Maybe I’ve finally met my match.