CompassRed

@CompassRed@discuss.tchncs.de

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon tries programming in Java⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Python and Java are barely comparable. I adore both languages equally and use them about the same amount at work. They are just different tools better suited to different tasks.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Burning Up⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I heard it was supposed to be human body temperature, but they used horse body temperature instead because it was close to human body temperature but more… stable.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Vectors Part 2⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  A vector space is a collection of vectors in which you can scale vectors and add vectors together such that the scaling and addition operations satisfy some nice relationships. The 2D and 3D vectors that we are used to are common examples. A less common example is polynomials. It’s hard to think of a polynomial as having a direction and a magnitude, but it’s easy to think of polynomials as elements of the vector space of polynomials.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The current state of auto insurance: shit that belongs on a shady Kickstarter from 2013⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Something has already happened and they didn’t touch my rates. I’ve been saving hundreds of dollars a year. I’ve saved well into the thousands of dollars at this point. I’m not saying the insurance companies are my friends and while I am better off using the tracker than not using it, that wasn’t even my point. My point was that the trackers all function differently and some are better than others.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The current state of auto insurance: shit that belongs on a shady Kickstarter from 2013⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s crazy how most of those programs work. The way my insurance handles it is way better. For example, no matter how bad you are at driving, they never raise the premiums above the normal rate, so it almost always makes sense to get the tracker from a finance perspective. (The only exception is that they will raise your rates if you drive farther in 6 months than you estimated on your initial application. The flip side is that they lower your rates if you don’t drive very much. I only drive about 1000 miles every 6 months, so my premium is really low.) They also have a Bluetooth device that stays in your car that your phone must be connected to in order for it to record trip data, and if you happen to be riding as the passenger in the car, the app has an option that allows you to clarify for each trip that you weren’t the driver. I was surprised to learn they aren’t all like that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Maths⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re mistaken unfortunately. The books don’t start that way. They start by describing Arthur Dent’s house.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨gatekeeping⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You have the spirit of things right, but the details are far more interesting than you might expect.

  For example, there are numbers past infinity. The best way (imo) to interpret the symbol ∞ is as the gap in the surreal numbers that separates all infinite surreal numbers from all finite surreal numbers. If we use this definition of ∞, then every infinite ordinal number is greater than ∞. For example, every infinite surreal number is greater than ∞ by the definition of ∞. Furthermore, ω > ∞, where ω is the first infinite ordinal number. This ordering is derived from the imbedding of the ordinal numbers within the surreal numbers.

  Additionally, as a classical ordinal number, ω doesn’t behave the way you’d expect it to. For example, we have that 1+ω=ω, but ω+1>ω. This of course implies that 1+ω≠ω+1, which isn’t how finite numbers behave, but it isn’t a contradiction - it’s an observation that addition of classical ordinals isn’t always commutative. It can be made commutative by redefining the sum of two ordinals, a and b, to be the max of a+b and b+a. This definition is required to produce the embedding of the ordinals in the surreal numbers mentioned above (there is a similar adjustment to the definition of ordinal multiplication that is also required).

  Note that infinite cardinal numbers do behave the way you expect. The smallest infinite cardinal number, ℵ₀, has the property that ℵ₀+1=ℵ₀=1+ℵ₀. For completeness sake, returning to the realm of surreal numbers, addition behaves differently than both the cardinal numbers and the ordinal numbers. As a surreal number, we have ω+1=1+ω>ω, which is the familiar way that finite numbers behave.

  What’s interesting about the convention of using ∞ to represent the gap between finite and infinite surreal numbers is that it renders expressions like ∞+1, 2∞, and ∞² completely meaningless as ∞ isn’t itself a surreal number - it’s a gap. I think this is a good convention since we have seen that the meaning of an addition involving infinite numbers depends on what type of infinity is under consideration. It also lends truth to the statement, “∞ is not a number - it is a concept,” while simultaneously allowing us to make true expressions involving ∞ such as ω>∞. Lastly, it also meshes well with the standard notation of taking limits at infinity.