Ironically, the existence of consistent mathematical laws derived from thousands of years of experimentation and observation is probably the most compelling argument for intelligent design, more so than any holy book.
Respectfully but strongly disagree. At its very core, math is based on logic which would be valid even without the existence of us or the universe. Things like “if a is false, and b is false, then the conditions a and b and a or b must both also be false; but if a is true and b is false, then the condition of a and b is still false but a or b is true.” Statements like that are what the simplest axioms are derived from, and everything else in math in turn. For example, from the previous statements one can derive that “if a is false and b is false, then both b and c and a and c must also be false regardless of the value of c; but if b or c is true and we know that b is false, then c must be true.” Doesn’t take a god to figure that out, it just is. Math tells you nothing about any sort of higher power or creator, nor does it prove the absence of a higher power or creator.
Perhaps you have a writing disability too, or I have a reading disability, but your original comment seems to say that you are completely able to understand math despite having a learning disability.
Go ahead and check. I re-read it several times just to make sure.
Ah, ok. Yes, I meant unable. My mistake. I am just incapable of understanding math even at very basic levels, as I was reminded of again this year after putting my 13-year-old daughter in online school. I barely made it through the math classes I took in high school. College required a single math course and I took the “this is so easy anyone can pass it” one and barely passed it.
I just wanted to clarify because I probably have a learning disability too but I never had any issues with math. It’s always been more about dealing with people.
Academically, I was always fine unless math got into the picture. I was always really good at science, and still love science, but once they started making me do math in science, my grades just started dropping because it just didn’t make sense to me. I’m mostly fine with arithmetic, fractions and decimals, but once it gets into solving for X or plotting graphs or calculating volume or using any sort of formula, I get totally lost.
And sometimes you have more than one variable. Now if you have n variables and n polynomials containing each of those variables and not coplanar with each other, you can solve for each of those variables by adding or subtracting multiples of those equations from each other and/or rearranging and substituting variables for their equivalent equations.
Now we’ll use this principle to write a ray tracer where we combine the equation for a line (that represents a ray traveling through a focal point and a pixel on a grid in front of that focal point) and the equation for a plane or other 3D primitive to find if they intersect and at what point if they do.
Next lecture we’ll have a guest speaker, the ghost of Joseph Fourier in to tell you why jpegs get more jpegy each time you jpeg them.
Any questions? Oh, actually we’ve run out of time and another class needs the room.
I mean that actually sounds like great fun to me, reminds me of when I taught myself matrix algebra to be able to mod bullet penetration and ricochets into GMod yeeeeears ago!
Though I think a good bit of what you are describing is beyond the entry level Algebra text book pictured, lol, Fourier is certainly in the realm of Statistics.
But yes, now its time to either fill in multiple choice dot scantron sheets, or fill out your answers to the final in buggy garbage software that often marks a correct answer is incorrect!
Yeah, I enjoyed this also and have written ray tracers for fun and for grades. And you’re right, this isn’t intro to algebra level stuff, I was just trying to capture the way learning can sometimes be simple and straightforward and then you suddenly hit a wall of unexpected complexity you don’t feel ready for.
I like GEMDAS personally. “Group” is best, it includes parenthesis and brackets, as well as things under radicals. I find that PEMDAS/BEMDAS causes problems later in math.
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