There’s no reason to bring the quadratic formula into this. Square roots can be negative, but when talking about the square root it’s normally assumed to be the principal square root, which is the positive one.
Comment on Conversing with Mathematicians
OozingPositron@feddit.cl 4 months agoThe square root is always positive, but you can plug it into the quadratic formula to get the two possible values.
ShrimpCurler@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
Nope. To clarify, square roots are the opposite pf squaring.
Now ask yourself:
What is 10² ?
What is (-10)² ?
If you get the same answer, then they are both the roots of the answer. +10 and -10 then gets together called ±10
JackbyDev@programming.dev 4 months ago
Okay, fine the square roots of 100 are ±10.
sevenapples@lemmygrad.ml 4 months ago
That’s not how the square root is defined.
You’re confusing “square root of 100” with “the answer to x^2 = 100”. These are different things.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 4 months ago
Which is why I differentiated between square roots and the principle square root by saying the square roots instead of the square root on the second comment.
sevenapples@lemmygrad.ml 4 months ago
so you came up with your own term to cover your mistake?
Eheran@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Seems very inaccurate the we can only determine the square root to ±10.