life is like algebra. throughout our lives we are trying to solve the problem, but really, we just have to designate a variable (our future) and solve for it. perhaps one day we'll solve for x, and perhaps there will be no solution. Yet by solving the rest of the problem, without harping on the unknown variable, we can succeed through life, and successfully pursue our dreams.

okay that didn't come out nearly as specific as i wanted it to, but either way, do you agree? what are your views?

that is quite a good theory.
unfortunately i suck at algebra as well as mean, median, mode and real life problem solving.

Can life be like writing a poem , short story or novel instead of algebra, please?

Algebra is all about finding x.  It is the art of x.  Using what is around it to find the unknown.  That, and balance, for every equation must balance, and in that balance is again, how you find x.

And gee, what's the the Barbie dolls all saying "math is so hard"?  They made them take those dolls off the market after all.

Some of us barbies can do al-gibra, tekla. Would just rather do something else.

Finding x in one's life will likely not be a mathematical equation anyhow.

Perhaps discovering the web and its interactions across the spectrum is a better way to discover x.

'Old women should be explorers.' (apologies to Eliot.)

In algebra, as in life, the key is in the balance.  When you get the balance right, the unknown becomes known.  Also, as in life, you have to show your work.  The answer is not as important as the process, the destination is not as important as the journey.

I have journeyed great distances in and around the little village I live in. 6 square miles that are part of the Web. A place where the tendrils tremble with every breeze, even those of butterflies in Australia or with the breathing of wombats denned for the day.

A small matter of keeping one's fingers just above the harp-strings so that the vibrations may be felt.

N~

Why make beliefs a greater value than memory of real actions?

a reference to what lisa?

Quote from: Natasha on January 27, 2008, 03:31:58 AM
life is like algebra. throughout our lives we are trying to solve the problem, but really, we just have to designate a variable (our future) and solve for it. perhaps one day we'll solve for x, and perhaps there will be no solution. Yet by solving the rest of the problem, without harping on the unknown variable, we can succeed through life, and successfully pursue our dreams.

okay that didn't come out nearly as specific as i wanted it to, but either way, do you agree? what are your views?

"[1931] was a time in history when most mathematicians, I think it would be fair to say, believed that mathematics could address every mathematical proposition. And that's a fair enough thing to believe in retrospect. Why shouldn't mathematics be able to prove every true mathematical fact? So when [Kurt] Gödel came along and he found a very surreal kind of tangle, a mathematical proposition that makes a peculiar claim about itself, which cannot be proven within the context of arithmetic — it was in the context of arithmetic that he did this — it really shocked people. It really shook them up."
--Interview with Janna Levin

Quote from: Nichole W. on January 31, 2008, 10:30:46 AM
a reference to what lisa?

Life!

The mention of Goedel was helpful. And as long as we are pulling in mathematicians and other brainiacs why not Heisenberg and Scroedinger as well?-- does it strike you, lisa, that math cannot define everything, especially not reality?

Reality includes and is affected by the observer and the processes going on in her brain and emotions as well. That kinda seems to moot many points about 'reality' by adding a single and rather simple word in front of 'life:' 'whose?'

Nichole

Quote from: tekla on January 30, 2008, 08:03:30 PM
Algebra is all about finding x.  It is the art of x.  Using what is around it to find the unknown.  That, and balance, for every equation must balance, and in that balance is again, how you find x.

And gee, what's the the Barbie dolls all saying "math is so hard"?  They made them take those dolls off the market after all.

Life can also be like taking your paintbrush and illustrating the world around you into something beautiful, or using your pen and doing the same with prose, or your instrument and filling ears with music.

Mathematics while crucial, aren't everyones strong suit, "barbie" or not.  (And I'm sure as hell not a Barbie.)

Quote from: Nichole W. on January 31, 2008, 07:14:01 PM
The mention of Goedel was helpful. And as long as we are pulling in mathematicians and other brainiacs why not Heisenberg and Scroedinger as well?-- does it strike you, lisa, that math cannot define everything, especially not reality?

Reality includes and is affected by the observer and the processes going on in her brain and emotions as well. That kinda seems to moot many points about 'reality' by adding a single and rather simple word in front of 'life:' 'whose?'

Nichole

You might wish to read A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines .

Quotereality

Consciousness has a view of 2 realities. Phenomenal experience is created in the mind. Physical action happens with reason regardless of what the mind thinks. Math is a language to describe reason. The vocabulary is expanded with better understanding.

What is the most strange (and wonderful) is that if Heisenberg is right, and we have not reason to doubt it - then, perhaps its not who's reality, but rather, who's thoughts are changing it.  If observation is changing events, then those who are observing the most - thinking the most, measuring the most, are changing reality more than others.  It might be - and Einstein would suggest it also, but not state it outright - that thought in and of itself is a power, and it might be the missing factor to the universal field theory.  The more people thinking about changing X, might well be starting the process, simply by thinking it.  The act of measuring the vector, sets the vector, the speed is unknown and unknowable, but the direction is set.

Should we presume that you put yourself in the category of "those who are observing the most - thinking the most, measuring the most, are changing reality more than others?"

Would you allow that those thinking the most might be thinking of the same thing over and over and wind up changing nothing except their own thoughts?

Is some thought about changing more to be desired, more efficacious, than other thought? Is thinking again and again about Quik chocolate powder causing as valid a change as thinking about the inhabitants of a planet in a distant solar system?

Are you discriminatory in your thought or is just thinking and observing all that's required? Does the observation and thought differ if say a crocodile does the observation and 'thinking' than if a professor does it?

Skeins and skeins.

N~

Awe heck no, I try hard never to think.  Gave it up years ago.  Makes my brain hurt.  Made everyone I know who did it too much crazy.  I mean golly gee, if I'm at work and I have to do the calcs, I think that about enough thinking for the day.  And even then, after a major run thinking is not even possible.  And when I do, it only gets me in trouble thinking that if observation changes reality, (Heisenberg) and if reality itself depends on the observer (Einstein) then perhaps thoughts have some power (as yet unmeasured) and the observer is changing reality just by watching it and thinking about it.  So there may well be a different reality for each of us, largely shaped by our thoughts.   And no good can come of thoughts like that.  I'm still trying to feed Schrödinger's cat, but it seems to be hungry and not-hungry at the same time.

As it is, I do the calcs on the floor in chalk, as someone once said, "you know how you can't trust people with sharp objects like pencils and pens?  We don't even trust him with paper."

Calc for roadies and physics for poets. Some things are, indeed, sacred.

Be well, tekla.

Physics is indeed the poetry of mathematics.  How simple, how sublime is E=mc²?  Or the F = ma, which can tell me how fast the wrench I'm dropping fifty feet is going when it hits you.  Just kidding, I always use a safety.  But perhaps, that F=ma also works in our lives in that crash and burn emotional way, how far you fall, how fast you hit. 

Though we all live and die by V=I/R, i.e. how many lights/amps can you put on one circuit and still run the coffee machine without burning down the theater (or making the band sound like crap, which most do well enough on their own)?

But algebra is one of those thing - particularly the story problems where people go "when am I going to use this in real life."  And it turns out, all the time. 

And I have an MP3 of Barbie saying the infamous line (whoever thought Barbie could be recalled) and I often set it up on a loop so I can scratch it and play it over the system.  I often wonder if we taught sex and drugs in classrooms, and made math a back-alley secret deal if the next generation would be quantum mechanics who couldn't to drugs or have sex to save their soul.