Simple Math Problem

Yikes! Angels dancing on the tip of a pin (by which I assume you mean the pointy end) is a tricky one.

The number on the head of a pin is, by contrast, a well-defined universal constant.

Either end, the number is strictly theoretical, and due to physicists performing the derivation, is bound to be off by a factor of two.

Amen!

I will soon be setting off for a few weeks cruise on my narrowboat. Email and wifi are hit and miss for my old computer so I doubt if I will be able read/respond to CR4. In order to avoid overload to my email files whist absent I will send bulk type inbox email addresses like CR4 to the waste bin until I get back

Until then I won't have a clue what comes in. Comments on this thread and any other topic - good, bad, right, wrong, won't be known.

In fact, I stopped reading this topic last week. It is only today I noticed your post as I opened CR4 to say I will be away for a while that I saw you post at the bottom of the email list No time to read the rest.

But I feel yours hopefully can put a close to the subject but with a comment.

Apart from Tornado #6 coming up with what I think is the right complete answer to the question, it closed the matter.

But for some reason the topic had to be dragged out, quite unnecessarily, by public attacks on me being wrong in my usage of 1/4th being pronounced as one fourth. Many of the replies telling me I am wrong are self-opinionated and have have been sent to my Sanctimonious Claptrap folder.

When I write 1/4th it means to me that it is pronounced as one fourth, nothing more, nothing less, and likewise 1/4 as one quarter. When I see 1/4 printed elsewhere, I don't know how it is meant to be pronounced - at the same time it probably doesn't matter. I see no ambiguity in 1/4 as a maths term.

I have no trouble with disagreements - it makes life interesting - you can pronounce 1/4 anyway you like - and any pronunciation, and any choice of words, you choose would be perfectly understandable to me in any discussion we might have. It is not for me to say you are wrong just because I have my own personal version.

but it works both ways. I defy anyone who tries to tell me my version is wrong - or redundant.

I am quite happy to accept there are other pronunciations - but not to told which one I must use.

Bill-gj hints at what to do with this topic. I've got the beer. But also a lot of rust to remove and paint to apply before I go. Cheers

Likewise, cheers. Happy July 5th, (with the redundant th).

Revelers and drunk rabble rousers kept me awake until midnight last night (July 4th (redundant th)) with their loud and bright fireworks all around the neighborhood, illegally I might add.

Liberty is wonderful until it gets in someone else's way, isn't it?

Got up 05:00 a.m (the a.m. is redundant also, since 05:00 implicitly means military time, pronounced: "zero five hundred hours", or "o five hundred".

Another question: why does my bad right foot (old sports injuries) never start aching until I lie down to go to sleep?

Probably the same reason the Hillbilly crossed the road. To catch the chicken thief?

Since to you 1/4 is one quarter, 1/4th must be one quarterth.

https://www.google.com/search?q=writing+and+pronouncing+frsactions&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=writing+and+pronouncing+fractions

In this further reading on the subject, you will find little if anything supporting your position, but lots and lots that doesn't.

This is not verbal nor is it speech. it's written

Were any of you folks involved with sending people to the moon at all?

You rounded off when you should have realized immediately that precisely 3 ÷ 1/3 = 9.0000000000000... (9)

1/3 ≠0.333

1/3 = 0.33333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333...

All of this talk about precedence and parenthesis is good, but, Ron's problem is with dividing three by a third.

Clearly there are exactly three thirds in one, and, nine thirds in three.

Why does he think that ¹/₃ = 0.333?

Why does he think that 0.333 is closer than 0.333333333333333333......

Are you still with us Ron? Are you now happy with the accepted answer?

Is it time to lay off whatever's in that glass?

Actually, your number-handling is correct, as far as you went.

If all the original numbers are expressed as single-digit numbers, and therefore, if you were, say, actually building something, the resultant number of 1.009009 should also be rounded to a single digit, which would be just ''1.'', in order to be consistently accurate, to the nearest whole-digit.

However, if the original math expression is to be handled strictly algebraically, then the individual starting numbers would each understood to be be expressed in the form of N.00000000..., and then the answer would be 1.000000...

This horse is dead... moving on

That's up to Mr. Ron, isn't it?

Not for me it isn't.

Oh come on, we just past ad nauseum, and moved on to ad infinitum. Surely there can be several more methods of beating, whipping, scourging, thumping, flagellating, assaulting, bruising, whooping, or tromping on a dead horsey.

oh... what the hell.....

The answer apparently depends on whom is performing the calculations.

An engineer gets 1. A chemist gets 1.

A theoretical chemical physicist or physical chemist gets |√-1^2|, or else he gets 2 (these guys are always off by a factor of 2.), and also the answer is always way beyond comprehension.

A fifth grader gets 1. A fifth grade school teacher gets 1 unless Johnny is a minority, and she/he/it changes the answer so as not to offend little Johnny.

A police officer gets 1 in a 0 speed limit zone.

I agree, James.

I asked a lawyer about this and his answer is - how much do I want?

Of course, that's what lawyers are trained to answer...

Now, on one hand, a land surveyor might answer something like; ''You've got it down to a linear error of less than 1-in-1000''.

On the other hand, a machinist might well answer; ''You've milled it down to within + or - .00005 (units-of-measure).''

So, the kind answer you get does depend on what sort of person you choose to ask...

[A fifth grader gets 1. A fifth grade school teacher gets 1 unless Johnny is a minority, and she/he/it changes the answer so as not to offend little Johnny.]

Sounds like political correctness.

Those who have sown the wind could reap the hurricane, if you catch my gust.

I am no fan of PC, or of PC's really.

I think if people are sooooo sensitive that their little pristine, environmentally clean and green ears will be harmed by hearing my words, then get the hell out of my way.

at the time i was in school (and this was in lost CCCP☆☭) the expression
9-3÷1/3+1 would stand for
9 minus 3 arithmetic progression sign¹ 1 divided by 3 plus 1
thus using loosely a set theory 9-3÷1/3+1 = 10 - 3 APS¹ 1/3 = 10 - NaN
v.2 defining ÷ as an an alternate symbol for a division 9-3/1/3+1 = 10 - exp(ln3-ln(1)-ln(3)) = 10 - 1 = 9
(how exactly people go insane in u.s. - e.g. / is higher priority division than ÷ - is not my area of exprtise)

I saw a dead horse being flogged in an earlier post...I just wondered whather it had been butchered for burgers yet, or is the thread not interested in lunch?

Lunch could be a lot more interesting than what's happening on this thread.

Anyone got any beer?

This has gone beyond flogging a dead horse, BBQ of dead horse flesh, or the like. It is now existential in scope, and soon aliens will learn the secrets of our math (pronounced maths in the UK), and will send remedial fractions teachers to live here among us on mission. They will appear to be Mormons on bicycles.

Aaahhgg ! !

They're here, they've been here for a while.

The signs are usually a couple of new bicycles padlocked to a lamp post or a railing and glimpses of two very smart young men tramping up and down peoples paths, trying to capture someone at their front door and start the brain drain.

Close Encounters. I recommend only answering the front door holding a bottle of strong liquor as a basic deterent.

LOL and garlic toast breath.