Science Memes

11441 readers

1730 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

Rules

Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
Keep it rooted (on topic).
No spam.
Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.

Research Committee

[email protected]

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

818

I just cited myself. (mander.xyz)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

239 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

TBH the name is a bit misleading. Same for "real" numbers. And oh so much more so for "normal numbers".

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

not really. i get it because we use rational to mean logical, but that's not what it means here. yeah, real and normal are stupid names but rational numbers are numbers that can be represented as a ratio of two numbers. i think it's pretty good.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I know all of that, but it's still misleading. It's not a dumb name by any means, but it still causes confusion often (as evidenced by many comments here)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

fair enough, but i think the confusion for that commenter comes from a misunderstanding of the definition of the mathematical concept rather than the meaning of the English word. they just think irrational numbers are those that have infinite decimal digits, which is not the definition.