- callyral [he/they] ( @callyral@pawb.social ) English21•6 months ago
They multiply in two by dividing in half (2x=x/0.5 as 0.5=¹/₂ which is the inverse of two)
- Norgur ( @Norgur@fedia.io ) 20•6 months ago
Dont be too hard on them. They are convinced that buying 12 2/4 melons in a train that started in new York at 8:15 going west and dividing 45 apples in another train that started at 10:45 in San Francisco going North are completely normal activities.
- Artyom ( @Artyom@lemm.ee ) English9•6 months ago
Just wait until they learn that computers subtract by adding, and multiply by adding, and divide by adding, and do exponents by adding, and do logarithms by adding.
- Kacarott ( @Kacarott@feddit.de ) English2•6 months ago
There must be add-vantages to this design.
- 0ops ( @0ops@lemm.ee ) English1•6 months ago
And don’t get me started on demorgan’s law!
- unexposedhazard ( @unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de ) English9•6 months ago
Just look at it as a mass calculation. Original mass is X and after dividing its X/2 so you have two halves. Simple as that :)
- JasonDJ ( @JasonDJ@lemmy.zip ) English8•6 months ago
They divide by 0.5.
1÷0.5 = 2.
- Ephera ( @Ephera@lemmy.ml ) English6•6 months ago
Always bothered me that this feels unintuitive in maths, even though this is precisely what maths tries to model with division.
But yeah, being able to divide by fractions of 1 and negative numbers and whatnot, that really does not make it feel like you’re cutting cake.
- Elise ( @xilliah@beehaw.org ) English2•6 months ago
If you divide two cakes by half a cake you get four half cakes.
And negative cakes just make you more hungry. So if you’re 2 cakes hungry and I give you 5 you’ll only have 3 left because you ate them.
- Ephera ( @Ephera@lemmy.ml ) English2•6 months ago
Yeah, I guess, lots of maths being done without units is the culprit here.
2 / 0.5 = 4
just makes it sound like you’ve magically applied some transformation to2
, which has cloned it.
2 cakes / 0.5 cakes = 4 half-cakes
rather makes it clear why it’s suddenly double the amount, without cloning involved.- Elise ( @xilliah@beehaw.org ) English1•6 months ago
I’m quite excited to help with any other things you have difficulties with.
- don ( @don@lemm.ee ) English6•6 months ago
Mathematicians: they don’t think biology be like that, but it do
- Leate_Wonceslace ( @Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English3•6 months ago
Biology is just when molecules try too hard.
- PhlubbaDubba ( @PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee ) English5•6 months ago
Multiplication and division are inverse operations, you can express one as the other, like expressing addition as the subtraction of a negative.
IIRC you can do this with integration and differentiation too but I’ve never tried it and also I’m personally not entirely sure if that’s true or if it’s something someone tried to convince me is good enough for work funded by taxes when trying to apply integrals and derivatives in an engineering project
- Gnome Kat ( @GnomeKat@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English5•6 months ago
All the people trying to explain why division and multiplication are the same and dividing by fractions bla bla bla…
But it’s missing the point that a cell dividing is nothing like algebraic division so the analogy just doesn’t make sense.
Saying its “dividing in half” so its actually “x/0.5 = 2x” doesn’t make any sense because the phrase “divide in half” in every other context means “x/2”…
Any ways if you want to model a cell dividing you should use an exponential
- letsgo ( @letsgo@lemm.ee ) English4•6 months ago
It’s Feynmann’s multiplication technique. What you do is make a slightly more complicated multiplication, then divide everything by infinity so it all goes to zero, then pull out of a hat a magician pulling himself out of a hat.
- Venator ( @Venator@lemmy.nz ) English4•6 months ago
The problem is just that its missing the units. The mass is divided, and the number of cells goes up, but the total mass of both cells stays about the same at the time of division(or maybe some of it is converted to energy that is lost from the cells to thier environment, so probably goes down), and is split between each cell.
- juicy ( @juicy@lemmy.today ) English3•6 months ago
x * y = x / ( 1/y )
- Leate_Wonceslace ( @Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English2•6 months ago
I feel attacked.
- NotSpez ( @NotSpez@lemm.ee ) English1•6 months ago
Nope! Chuck Testa.