grizzer
New member
Quora.com is something of a facebook wikipedia startup for overeducated whiners..
Anyways here is the solution:
2 + 2 isn't always 4.
A professor told his advanced math class that on the first day. One of the students, confused, spoke up:
"Wait, you're telling me 2+2 isn't 4?"
"Right. Well sometimes it is, but other times it's 1."
The student picked up his things, walked out of the room, and never came back to class.
Whenever we add numbers together, it is implied that they are being added together in (the set of real numbers). There's also (the set of integers).
Then there are sets like , called the set of integers modulo 3, which means the numbers "wrap around" when you get to the number 3.
Counting normally looks like this: 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9...
But in it would look like this: 0,1,2,0,1,2,0,1,2,0...
So what's 2 + 2? Starting at the number 2 and counting up, the next number is 0, and the next is 1. Here 2 + 2 is 1.
[This would be written 2 + 2 ≡ 1 or 2 + 2 = 1 (mod 3). My original post used the improper notation 2 + 2 = 1. Credit to Joseph Boyle for correcting this.]
But who cares? Isn't it just mathematical mumbo-jumbo with no practical application?
If it's 11 o'clock, what time will it be after you spend 3 hours on Quora?
2 o'clock. 11 + 3 ≡ 2. We keep time in .
Anyways here is the solution:
2 + 2 isn't always 4.
A professor told his advanced math class that on the first day. One of the students, confused, spoke up:
"Wait, you're telling me 2+2 isn't 4?"
"Right. Well sometimes it is, but other times it's 1."
The student picked up his things, walked out of the room, and never came back to class.
Whenever we add numbers together, it is implied that they are being added together in (the set of real numbers). There's also (the set of integers).
Then there are sets like , called the set of integers modulo 3, which means the numbers "wrap around" when you get to the number 3.
Counting normally looks like this: 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9...
But in it would look like this: 0,1,2,0,1,2,0,1,2,0...
So what's 2 + 2? Starting at the number 2 and counting up, the next number is 0, and the next is 1. Here 2 + 2 is 1.
[This would be written 2 + 2 ≡ 1 or 2 + 2 = 1 (mod 3). My original post used the improper notation 2 + 2 = 1. Credit to Joseph Boyle for correcting this.]
But who cares? Isn't it just mathematical mumbo-jumbo with no practical application?
If it's 11 o'clock, what time will it be after you spend 3 hours on Quora?
2 o'clock. 11 + 3 ≡ 2. We keep time in .
