- cross-posted to:
- nonpolitical_memes@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- nonpolitical_memes@lemmy.ml
Intuitively speaking, how many times does half of a thing fit into a quarter of a thing? The answer is, exactly one half time.
How many halves fit into a quarter? Half of them
That’s exactly how I think of it, so strange someone downvoted you
This is why “divide by half” and “divide in half” are two different things
p/q=q
So q=√p
Works with a lot of numbers ☝🏻🤓
Ehhh |q| = √p but close enough
If q=√p then -q=√p also.
0.25 / 0.5 = 0.5
0.25 = 0.5 × 0.5
1/4 = 1/2 × 1/2It won’t keep you up if you just think of Divide as just multiplying by the fraction
The math looks perfectly fine. But when people phrase “half of a quarter” I think they have (1/2)*(1/4) in mind, instead of 0.25/0.5
But this isn’t “half of a quarter” this is “the reciprocal of a half, of a quarter”
Half of a quarter is 0.25/2 or 0.25*1/2
I know, but to me this meme doesn’t make sense to me unless I assume the person reading the math Expression is interpreting its real world application.
25 / 5 = 5 and nobodies head exploded. That’s just evaluating a math Expression. .25 / .5 = .5 is the same. It’s not a “my brain can’t comprehend how to evaluate expressions” as the meme suggests.
However, if someone who doesnt do much algebra thought to themselves “I need half of a quarter”, then I could understand why their brain might “hurt” as the meme suggests, for a similar reason why adding 20 degree Celsius water to 20 degree Celsius water doesn’t make 40 degree Celsius wate
I’m probably reading into it too much, but the meme just doesn’t feel like a “mind fuck that keeps me up at night”. I’m looking for reasons to try and explain it, but it’s just a math expression at the end of the day
I think you nailed the confusion in this meme.
To simplify: it’s confusing that ½ = 0.5, but 1/2 ≠ 1/0.5
I think the meme is an exaggeration of the situation for comedic effect. It just looks silly at first glance, I don’t believe the OP is kept up at night by this, and is rather making a remark about how it doesn’t instantly feel intuitive as a result (to use the 20 Celsius water example, its the same kind of momentary “wtf?” as 40 Celsius water not being twice as hot as 20 Celsius water. After a moment you remember “oh derp yeah we’re missing 273.15 kelvin in this picture lol”)
I worry that people who can get onto the internet find fractions a challenge.
I don’t think this was shared because people are finding it a “challenge” it just looks funny.
It takes all of a few seconds for your actual mathematical processing to kick in and you go “oh yeah duh” but its just a funky little string of numbers.
It lives in the same camp as how none of the >3 whole multiples of 17 feel like multiples of 17. 68? Preposterous.
1×2=2
Wow. Much brain. Maths wow.
Divide by 1/2 or multiply with 2/1. It’s an equivalent transformation.
A quarter is one half of one half. Makes perfect sense.
That would be 0.25 = 0.5*0.5 and rearranged equation doesn’t help unless you understand it anyway

The numbers between zero and one are where all of the fun is!
25/5=5
2.5/0.5=5
o.O
That’s the same as 2/2=1 3/3=1 268/268=1 …
I think, it is the real world logic that makes it hard to grasp. If you divide something with something small it becomes bigger. Mathematically it’s easy and makes sense, but it it’s somehow not intuitive. Especially for young me :)
Except that’s not what’s written.
It’s 0.25/0.5
Raising it exponentially would be
2.5/5, or
25/50=50
1/2≠50. Does not compute.
2^-2 * (2-1)-1 = 2^-2 * 2^(-1 * -1) = 2^(-2 + -1 * -1) = 2^(-2 + 1) = 2^-1 = 1/2 = 0.5
This don’t avoid to sleep not even for 1/2 second. But pick any number. If that number is even, divide it by 2. If it’s odd, multiply it by 3 and add 1. Now repeat the process with your new number. If you keep going, you’ll eventually end up at 1.
Any positive number?









