671
wat
(mander.xyz)
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
Always bothered me that this feels unintuitive in maths, even though this is precisely what maths tries to model with division.
But yeah, being able to divide by fractions of 1 and negative numbers and whatnot, that really does not make it feel like you're cutting cake.
If you divide two cakes by half a cake you get four half cakes.
And negative cakes just make you more hungry. So if you're 2 cakes hungry and I give you 5 you'll only have 3 left because you ate them.
Yeah, I guess, lots of maths being done without units is the culprit here.
2 / 0.5 = 4
just makes it sound like you've magically applied some transformation to2
, which has cloned it.2 cakes / 0.5 cakes = 4 half-cakes
rather makes it clear why it's suddenly double the amount, without cloning involved.I'm quite excited to help with any other things you have difficulties with.