Recent content by tensorproduct

I'm pretty sure that we're on the same page here. Sorry if my earlier post came off a little condescending. I think that you're a little quick to dismiss prefix and postfix notation, once you get used to them they are very powerful and allow certain abstractions that infix doesn't do so well...

I stated in an earlier post that the commonly used order of operations is useful for a whole bunch of reasons. That doesn't make it special. It is still an arbitrary evaluation scheme. It leads to no more mathematical consistency or truth than prefix or postfix notation would, as was stated...

Except it is. We can formulate sets of rules other than PEMDAS and then, as long as we apply those rules consistently, we will get results consistent within that rule-set. The choice of PEMDAS as our evaluation scheme is entirely arbitrary. It is one of a multitude of conventions, each of...

I agree with you about scientific (and mathematical) papers. If there is any ambiguity about what a formula means, then somebody done fucked up. I will say that it's important for people to understand that there is some order. Sure, it's basically arbitrary, but as long as you're...

Oh, there is a logical* system. But it's not the only such system that we could apply to evaluating strings of symbols. PEDMAS is perfectly valid, but no more so than strict left-to-right or right-to-left evaluation. It's certainly not objectively better in anyway. When I say arbitrary...

See my earlier post. The order of operations is completely arbitrary. The explanations offered by Darkmantle and poiumty explain some of the reasons that we use this particular arbitrary evaluation rule (that multiplication is treated as repeated addition so it makes sense to do it earlier)...

I studied TP for my undergrad (at Trinity College, Dublin). Up until then, I had never encountered any maths problem that gave me any trouble whatsoever*. The first year of university level maths kicked my arse from one end of campus to the other. As I understand it, the British A-level maths...

I use maths so often, and have done for so long, that order of operations is deeply ingrained into my brain. I don't remember ever learning a mnemonic for the order of operations, I was just drilled with so many problems and examples that it became second nature. The thing is, when you go on...

i exists every bit as much as -1, or pi. Just because it's marginally harder to think about doesn't make it less real (though it's not Real).

Oh Jesus. That is embarrassing.

You accuse me of calling you names that I never did and then say I'm projecting?! Seriously? Fuck this, I'm out. Edit: sorry, that was overly rude. I am going to bail on this conversation though, it's safe to say we're not going to come to any sort of agreement. I basically cannot at...

I can't be bothered to review the whole thread at this point, but I am fairly sure that nobody said you shouldn't criticize the game. Certainly I didn't, so it's not a point that I'm going to defend. If you want to criticize the game, that's great. It can help you understand what you do and...

I never said you shouldn't criticize the Mass Effect 3. As far as I know, nobody has said that (okay, somebody somewhere probably has, but nobody in this thread). There is a difference between saying that you don't like something, explaining why you don't like it, and demanding that it be...

And thank you for your thoughtful and polite response. As I said, I take people at their word. Unfortunately that can mean that I kind of expect a whole lot of prefacing and conditioning with platitudes like "as I see it", "in my opinion", and "from my studies in Guam I have this attitude"...

No problem at all. A pleasure to talk to you.