this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 185 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (8 children)

What about plain old x = -10?

-10 ^ 2 = 100
-10 ^ 3 = -1000
-10 ^ 5 = -100000

[–] [email protected] 121 points 3 months ago

Isn't that the joke?

[–] [email protected] 68 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That's what he wrote, I imagine.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It is, but with imaginary numbets

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago
[–] [email protected] 47 points 3 months ago

i² = -1 so...

[–] [email protected] 32 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago (1 children)

of course, but this problem is solvable without any understanding of complex numbers, and 10*i^2 is a really clunky, multi-operation expression whereas -10 is just an integer.

simplifying one's answers is standard practice and any grader who received the answer in the OP would be obligated to point out that while technically correct, they're missing the basic fact that the answer is -10.

The Rube Goldberg comment is apt as the solution is absurdly complicated and overengineered for the task it performs.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Yes that's what the thing you are looking at is built upon.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 40 points 3 months ago (1 children)

people being pedantic showoffs doesn't really register as humor for me, TBH

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago

That's true, the OOP is being quite snarky with their comment on a post where someone's had a genuine basic doubt

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yeah exactly you're right, why overcomplicate the problem like the Reddit comment did? I guess that's just typical Reddit thinking that being pendantic and using lots of fancy words and long explanations makes you smart.

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

Nah just boiler plate autism.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago
[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago

That was my immediate thought too.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago
[–] [email protected] 102 points 3 months ago (2 children)

When all you have is an imaginary hammer, everything looks like a rotation around the imaginary unit circle.

Explanation of mathsx = -10, i = √-1 so i² = -1 and 10i²=-10

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Found the math but no explanation.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago (11 children)

The squareroot of 100 is ±10.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

IIRC, your spoilery “so” is the other way round. The right side is the definition, and the left-hand side a layman’s shorthand, as the root operator isn’t defined on negative numbers.

I might very well be wrong. My being a mathematician has been over for a while now, my being a pedantic PITA not though.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

I don't know enough to know how correct your pedantry is (technically or not), but to explain the meme it made sense to go through the symbols in the order you see them. I never got any points from the proof questions in exams anyway.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Wait, isn’t x just -10 if x^3 is not 1000?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago
[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 months ago

that is a very long way to write -10

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 45 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That's because the explanation was about 10 times as complicated as it needs to be

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 months ago

He is trolling with overcomplicating

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (2 children)

What an extremely unnecessary explanation. As a math teacher I would have deducted points for this answer.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

"show your work"

Malicious compliance intensifies

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

No definition what values are suitable for x.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 months ago (4 children)

x has to be -10, right? Or am I missing something?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Yeah, I think the point is that the person answering was wrong/over complicating. If x=10i, then x^2 would be -100 (or potentially -10 depending on what you think the ^2 is applied to).

[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 months ago

They said x=10i^2, not 10i. Difference is it equals -10, and they chose not to simplify.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

They're correct, it's just overcomplicated as fuck in ways that are correct but completely irrelevant to the question.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

The answer in the meme (10i^2) is -10

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

Depends on what are the allowed values for x are. Real numbers, complexe numbers, binary or I made up my own numbers ;)

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

Probably what they were going for, but there are literally an infinite number of exotic arithmetic spaces you could ask this question in. For example, x=10 works in any ring with a modulus greater than 100 and less than 1000.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Therefore i¹⁰ = ln(-1)¹⁰/pi¹⁰ = -1

This is true but does not follow from the preceding steps, specifically finding it to be equal to -1. You can obviously find it from i²=-1 but they didn't show that. I think they tried to equivocate this expression with the answer for e^iπ^ which you can't do, it doesn't follow because e^iπ^ and i¹⁰ = ln(-1)¹⁰/pi¹⁰ are different expressions and without external proof, could have different values.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

If we know the values of ln(-1)¹⁰ and pi¹⁰ we hypothetically could calculate their divided result as -1 instead of using strict logic, but it is missing a few steps. Moreover logs of negative numbers just end up with an imaginary component anyway so there isn't really any progress to be made on that front. Typing ln(-1)¹⁰ into my scientific calculator just yields i¹⁰pi¹⁰, (I'm guessing stored rather than calculated? Maybe calculated with built in Euler) so the result of division is just i¹⁰ anyway and we're back where we started.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

You can find the value of ln(-1)¹⁰ by examining the definition of ln(x): the result z satisfies eᶻ=x. For x=-1, that means the z that satisfies eᶻ=-1. Then we know z from euler's identity. Raise to the 10, and there's our answer. And like you pointed out, it's not a particularly helpful answer.

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