Yeah but because you can't see at that level of precision you don't know what those numbers are
-
-
Replying to @arthur_affect @Gent_Sausage
It doesn't even need to be that close to 2.5 2 1/3 pretty clearly rounds to two. And two lots of that clearly rounds to five.
4 replies 0 retweets 29 likes -
-
Replying to @Gent_Sausage @arthur_affect
If you have a set of scales and you have a thing that shows on the scale that it weighs two, and another if that thing, that also shows on the scale that it weighs two, and you weigh both together you still see that it weighs five. That's the point.
38 replies 3 retweets 45 likes -
Replying to @phyphor @Gent_Sausage
The argument has never been to crumple up arithmetic and throw it in the trash and replace it with a completely new number theory The argument is that the number theory "we all learned as kids" maps onto physical reality in various complicated, subjective ways
5 replies 2 retweets 41 likes -
But the whole 2 grams + 2 grams = 5 grams is absolutely false. Putting two objects on a scale is not addition or arithmetic. Addition would be weighing each one separately and then adding the weights + uncertainty of each measurement
1 reply 1 retweet 1 like -
Yes It is a statement about how naive faith in addition without considering the process by which real quantities get turned into numbers in the real world (measurement) can fail
2 replies 1 retweet 10 likes -
If you just naively take a bunch of separate measurements and add them up on paper you get a "correct" answer (2+2=4) that is actually worse than the answer you get if you weigh them all together (5)
2 replies 1 retweet 4 likes -
I get what you’re saying but “weighing things together” is not addition. You could just glue those things together and they become one thing that is being measured as 5 grams. Addition would be, “I have 2 measured weights, here is the sum”
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
It means whatever the person talking finds it useful to mean Carr went on to bring up stuff that people say as a joke -- "1+1=3", when it's two animals that mate and have an offspring, "1+1=1", when one of them kills and eats the other -- but it reflects a deeper truth
3 replies 1 retweet 11 likes
Math is a form of human language, it's a tool we use to communicate in different ways about different topics for different purposes Paul Lockhart's A Mathematician's Lament went viral in 2002 because of his defense of math as an *aesthetic project*, as art
-
-
Someone who actually loves math appreciates things like this in the same way someone who loves the English language loves wordplay and puns Someone who sees their job as correcting people and silencing their silliness is someone whose job is getting people to hate math
1 reply 4 retweets 22 likes - Show replies
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.