What made you smile or laugh today? Part III

[Farawyn]

I think I need a set of these pencils

Me too.
To use as weapons.

 

[cascadiabound]

Me too.
To use as weapons.

duh.

 

[Farawyn]

duh.

Eye.

Or maybe urethra.

 

[LIVINRFANTASIES]

Denny

This made me laugh, but I'm a complete nerd.
http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=1543

Like laughing at a train wreck!

This would make me scream and run from the room said the math-challenged subbie.

I'm right behind you.

If those pencils come in a #2 I'll take a pack.

 

[Wild_Honey_66]

'I just need to go watch cartoons for thirty minutes or so to get my mind off of you.'

 

[Bramblethorn]

This would make me scream and run from the room said the math-challenged subbie.

This isn't a great explanation, but I'll give it a go.

OK, so, mathematicians love patterns.

Take the number 18 (2 x 9) and add up the digits: 1+8 = 9.

Take 27 (3 x 9) and add up the digits: 2+7 = 9.

Take 99 (11 x 9) and add up the digits: 9+9 = 18. Do it again: 1+8 = 9.

Take a really large multiple of 9: 9 x 60728948 = 546560532. Add up the digits: 5+4+6+5+6+0+5+3+2 = 36. Add them again: 3+6 = 9.

So it looks like there's a pattern here, and indeed there is. For any multiple of 9 (except for zero), no matter how big it is, if you keep adding up the digits you'll eventually get back to 9.

Mathematicians love to look for that kind of pattern. If we try out lots of examples, and the same pattern always holds, we suspect we've discovered that rule.

So, with the Borwein integral, we start with a complex formula and we plug the number 1 into it, and after some fiddly calculus we find out that the answer is exactly pi/2.

Next, we plug the number 3 in, and it takes a bit more work to get the answer, but eventually we can show that once again, it's exactly pi/2.

Same happens if we plug in 5, or 7, or 9, or 11, or 13. Every time, we get a big complicated mess o'stuff that turns out to be exactly equal to pi/2.

And then, when we plug in 15... it's not exactly equal to pi/2. It's very close, so close that if you calculated it on a computer you probably wouldn't notice the difference. But it's different.

It's like, if you go to your neighbour's place and press the doorbell every day for a week, and every day it plays Tony Orlando singing "Tie A Yellow Ribbon". You figure that, okay, that's just what this doorbell does. And then, on the eight day, you press that doorbell, and it's playing "Tie A Yellow Ribbon" again... but this time, it's the Frank Sinatra version.

Or, try another example: you walk past the same painting every day for a week, and it's always the same. And then on the eight day, it's almost exactly the same painting, but some tiny detail has changed.

It's something that just runs against all mathematical intuition, that a thing which gives the exact same result over and over and over suddenly... doesn't.

 

[lillianaZ]

......

 

[Blue]

[..]

What's the answer to P vs NP?

 

[gracie920101]

This isn't a great explanation, but I'll give it a go.

OK, so, mathematicians love patterns.

Take the number 18 (2 x 9) and add up the digits: 1+8 = 9.

Take 27 (3 x 9) and add up the digits: 2+7 = 9.

Take 99 (11 x 9) and add up the digits: 9+9 = 18. Do it again: 1+8 = 9.

Take a really large multiple of 9: 9 x 60728948 = 546560532. Add up the digits: 5+4+6+5+6+0+5+3+2 = 36. Add them again: 3+6 = 9.

So it looks like there's a pattern here, and indeed there is. For any multiple of 9 (except for zero), no matter how big it is, if you keep adding up the digits you'll eventually get back to 9.

Mathematicians love to look for that kind of pattern. If we try out lots of examples, and the same pattern always holds, we suspect we've discovered that rule.

So, with the Borwein integral, we start with a complex formula and we plug the number 1 into it, and after some fiddly calculus we find out that the answer is exactly pi/2.

Next, we plug the number 3 in, and it takes a bit more work to get the answer, but eventually we can show that once again, it's exactly pi/2.

Same happens if we plug in 5, or 7, or 9, or 11, or 13. Every time, we get a big complicated mess o'stuff that turns out to be exactly equal to pi/2.

And then, when we plug in 15... it's not exactly equal to pi/2. It's very close, so close that if you calculated it on a computer you probably wouldn't notice the difference. But it's different.

It's like, if you go to your neighbour's place and press the doorbell every day for a week, and every day it plays Tony Orlando singing "Tie A Yellow Ribbon". You figure that, okay, that's just what this doorbell does. And then, on the eight day, you press that doorbell, and it's playing "Tie A Yellow Ribbon" again... but this time, it's the Frank Sinatra version.

Or, try another example: you walk past the same painting every day for a week, and it's always the same. And then on the eight day, it's almost exactly the same painting, but some tiny detail has changed.

It's something that just runs against all mathematical intuition, that a thing which gives the exact same result over and over and over suddenly... doesn't.

Aaahhhhhhhh!!!
Slowly banging my forehead against the desk.

My algebra2 class used a book containing only "story problems" for homework. Being sickly as a child, I missed a lot of school and was always behind in classes and especially math and science classes since missing lectures and practicals really set one back. I learned to read said story problems with an added question at the end of each one, i.e.,
If car A travels east at 60 mph and car B travel West at blah, blah, blah. Where will they meet? WHO CARES!
Needless to say, I had an A average in my classes until I hit that class.

The link you provided is really a form of bdsm mindfuck, isn't it?

Maybe I prefer the Sinatra version!

 

[Bramblethorn]

What's the answer to P vs NP?

P != NP.

(I don't actually know that to be true, but if anybody ever finds a constructive proof that P = NP, everybody's going to be way too busy dealing with the consequences to remember this post.)

My algebra2 class used a book containing only "story problems" for homework. Being sickly as a child, I missed a lot of school and was always behind in classes and especially math and science classes since missing lectures and practicals really set one back. I learned to read said story problems with an added question at the end of each one, i.e.,
If car A travels east at 60 mph and car B travel West at blah, blah, blah. Where will they meet? WHO CARES!

Ugh, story problems. They're a great idea but so badly handled by most textbooks and a lot of teachers. I'm pretty sure some of the problems in my textbooks have been recycled over and over since the Boer War or thereabouts.

 

[Blue]

P != NP.

(I don't actually know that to be true, but if anybody ever finds a constructive proof that P = NP, everybody's going to be way too busy dealing with the consequences to remember this post.)

If P = NP you should make an app from it that solves sudoku puzzles.

 

[Bramblethorn]

If P = NP you should make an app from it that solves sudoku puzzles.

Don't need P = NP for that. Sudoku is a small enough problem that my 5-year-old laptop can solve a tough 9x9 in a few milliseconds, and if you're using a constraint programming language it only takes a dozen or so lines of code: https://github.com/MiniZinc/libminizinc/blob/master/tests/examples/sudoku.mzn

(Okay, technically that's not solving the problem per se; rather, it passes it to a pre-packaged solver algorithm. But it does the job.)

 

[Blue]

Don't need P = NP for that. Sudoku is a small enough problem that my 5-year-old laptop can solve a tough 9x9 in a few milliseconds, and if you're using a constraint programming language it only takes a dozen or so lines of code: https://github.com/MiniZinc/libminizinc/blob/master/tests/examples/sudoku.mzn

(Okay, technically that's not solving the problem per se; rather, it passes it to a pre-packaged solver algorithm. But it does the job.)

BIG sudoku puzzles.
10,000,000,000 x 10,000,000,000

 

[Bramblethorn]

BIG sudoku puzzles.
10,000,000,000 x 10,000,000,000

That's almost a zettabyte. My poor little laptop doesn't have the memory to store all that, let alone solve it! And at Australian broadband speeds it'd be about 25 million years to download, depending on sparseness.

WMMSOLT: I'm learning how to roll my Rs. My poor cat has had to put up with me making weird noises for the last three hours.

 

[seela]

WMMSOLT: I'm learning how to roll my Rs. My poor cat has had to put up with me making weird noises for the last three hours.

How's it going? Rolling comfortably already?

I've been trying to learn the proper way to pronounce Korean and I just can't. A lot of the times I can't even hear the difference between regular and tense consonants. When I first started to learn I thought my ear would get used to spotting the differences consistently, but that still hasn't happened. And usually my ear is pretty good with these things.

I keep saying 상 (sang, prize) instead of 쌍 (ssang, pair) etc. So annoying.


But my smile for today was also language related.

German. I got to speak it today longer than three sentences. It was a real conversation and I had it in German. Yay!

 

[Primalex]

P != NP.

(I don't actually know that to be true, but if anybody ever finds a constructive proof that P = NP, everybody's going to be way too busy dealing with the consequences to remember this post.)

As computer scientist this makes me cringe.

There are plenty of P problems with a polynomial that makes the effort grow so much that you still need the age of the universe to solve. For example, cracking the AES encryption with a fixed length key is already a P problem and with 256 bit key length nevertheless considered unsolveable. At the same time there are NP problems where algorithms are already "good enough" that for any reasonable n you have a solution.

And last but not least, it is wrong, because we are talking not about NP but NP-complete problems. NP-complete problems are a subset of NP problems. Only when you find a NP-complete problem that can be solved as P problem, you have a benefit, because only for NP-complete problems it is guaranteed that you can convert other NP problems to that solution. If you find a P solution to a regular NP problem, you have only improved one problem, not all NP problems.

 

[Bramblethorn]

As computer scientist this makes me cringe.

There are plenty of P problems with a polynomial that makes the effort grow so much that you still need the age of the universe to solve. For example, cracking the AES encryption with a fixed length key is already a P problem and with 256 bit key length nevertheless considered unsolveable. At the same time there are NP problems where algorithms are already "good enough" that for any reasonable n you have a solution.

Yeah, you may have missed it, but Blue and I were talking somewhat tongue-in-cheek there. I come here to chat with friends, not to write publication-standard-rigorous papers; if you want me to get into all the caveats about polynomial order and magnitudes of constant terms, you'll have to wait until I'm getting paid for it, because I don't enjoy that sort of thing quite enough to do it for free.

And last but not least, it is wrong, because we are talking not about NP but NP-complete problems. NP-complete problems are a subset of NP problems. Only when you find a NP-complete problem that can be solved as P problem, you have a benefit, because only for NP-complete problems it is guaranteed that you can convert other NP problems to that solution. If you find a P solution to a regular NP problem, you have only improved one problem, not all NP problems.

I'm surprised that I have to tell a "computer scientist" this, but let me spell it out:

In set theory, the = symbol indicates that two sets have the exact same membership, not just that they overlap.

Hence, the statement "P = NP" implies that ALL NP problems, including but not limited to NP-complete, are P. If you don't see why that would be a big deal, perhaps one of your colleagues can help.

(And now you go back on ignore. Sorry dude, but you're neither as clever nor as entertaining as you believe yourself to be.)

 

[Bramblethorn]

How's it going? Rolling comfortably already?

I wouldn't say comfortably, but at least I think I know what I'm supposed to be doing and from here it should just be a matter of practice. Though at some point I need to find a native speaker and check that I'm doing it right!

I've been trying to learn the proper way to pronounce Korean and I just can't. A lot of the times I can't even hear the difference between regular and tense consonants. When I first started to learn I thought my ear would get used to spotting the differences consistently, but that still hasn't happened. And usually my ear is pretty good with these things.

I can usually hear German umlauts, but anything past that is stretching it. I had four years of Mandarin and I never really got the the hang of a tonal language.

German. I got to speak it today longer than three sentences. It was a real conversation and I had it in German. Yay!

Yay! I'm also doing German, but so far it's almost all been from the app and by listening. The closest I've come to conversation is this thread and since OP never replied, I don't know how bad I was

But family members have a German visitor coming to stay, so perhaps I can co-opt her for conversation practice some time.

 

[gracie920101]

Watching the posts of Bramby, Blue, and Primalex...sticks fingers in my ears and squeezes eyes shut

La, la, la, la, la,la....

 

[gracie920101]

Sorry guys, I couldn't resist!

 

[MeekMe]

I baked cookies for my cats! （╹◡╹）♡

But they hate them. (Ｔ＿Ｔ)


So maybe I will put them in soup and call them tuna dumplings or something. The last bit of dough I molded into a cute cartoonish rat with a bow tie. (o^^o)

 

[lillianaZ]

Money can, indeed, buy happiness. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-41742785

 

[dacoach44]

My grand daughter

Babysat for a full hour! So fun!

 

[dacoach44]

German?

I wouldn't say comfortably, but at least I think I know what I'm supposed to be doing and from here it should just be a matter of practice. Though at some point I need to find a native speaker and check that I'm doing it right!



I can usually hear German umlauts, but anything past that is stretching it. I had four years of Mandarin and I never really got the the hang of a tonal language.



Yay! I'm also doing German, but so far it's almost all been from the app and by listening. The closest I've come to conversation is this thread and since OP never replied, I don't know how bad I was

But family members have a German visitor coming to stay, so perhaps I can co-opt her for conversation practice some time.

My daughter is German. I am reading a German kid book to her daughter, and daughter walks in. "Are U speaking Chinese to my kid?"

 

[Farawyn]

I baked cookies for my cats! （╹◡╹）♡

But they hate them. (Ｔ＿Ｔ)


So maybe I will put them in soup and call them tuna dumplings or something. The last bit of dough I molded into a cute cartoonish rat with a bow tie. (o^^o)

THIS made me laugh.
WMMS?
My SIL came over to watch my mom, and folded all my laundry and cleaned my basement.