The nice thing that happened in class today:
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This student wants to "invent a new zero" so. Watch out everyone. Math is about to get a lot more... IDK ... but MORE.
@futurebird different from undef, null, positive zero, and negative zero? ... okey...
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@futurebird this story has saved my day from being bleh.
@Unixbigot @futurebird damn warp core runs on taking the local warp constant and dividing by the number of seconds since midnight. It crashes at midnight with an F_DIV_ZERO error.
Kit Bashir (@Unixbigot@aus.social)
“We’re out of warp, what’s wrong?” “Nothing, it happens every morning at this time. Just reset it. You haven’t been getting that on B-shift?” “No, and how long—holy crap!” “What?” “Warp degradation has added three days to our ETA so far. TELL ME if stuff breaks; if we miss the book sale on Rigel Four everybody’s getting Curium ash for christmas.” #Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot
Aus.Social (aus.social)
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@futurebird that's awesome. I don't share my work very often, but especially because you mention cuneiform, I actually have "invented" a new zero, called zo, in a modern base-60 number system, inspired by the Babylonian system and Wu Xing
hyxos_numerals/GRAMMAR.md at main · hyxos/hyxos_numerals
A rust library for working with the Hyxos Numerals - hyxos_numerals/GRAMMAR.md at main · hyxos/hyxos_numerals
GitHub (github.com)
There is a very poorly written and not maintained api to generate the glyphs at https://hyxos.io/docs
I'm plodding away in my spare time trying to turn it into something more usable to make it more accessible for everyone... up to this point it's mostly been used by my wife and I to build card game prototypes.
I'm hoping to release a much more polished glyph builder this year, I really want to make a typeface, and oh boy, that is a deep, deep rabbithole
@macbraughton I love Mastodon.
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F myrmepropagandist shared this topic
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This student wants to "invent a new zero" so. Watch out everyone. Math is about to get a lot more... IDK ... but MORE.
@futurebird your students are so lucky to have you
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The nice thing that happened in class today:
Grade 5 students solve a puzzle where they put cuneiform numbers in order (there is no guidance, just work with the symbols, how do you order them?)
I told them they are like archeologists cracking a code. They did it!
"But where is zero?"
"It wasn't invented yet." I said this seriously. I mean ... it's true.Later that day the same student asked if it was a joke. I got to tell them no! Zero had to be invented. Everything had to be invented!
@futurebird In a more perfect world, I would have had you as a teacher when I was a kid. Even for a few months.
I'm so thankful that there are kids out there, right now, with you as their teacher.
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This student wants to "invent a new zero" so. Watch out everyone. Math is about to get a lot more... IDK ... but MORE.
@futurebird your student has a bright future as a topologist
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@futurebird In a more perfect world, I would have had you as a teacher when I was a kid. Even for a few months.
I'm so thankful that there are kids out there, right now, with you as their teacher.
@futurebird I'm curious...thinking about this...but does the concept of zero in mathematics come from rotational calculations? You can't have Pi without zero. Is the lack of zero, more about the approach to keeping track of grain or other crops?
The numbers we count, are the ones we are tracking?
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This student wants to "invent a new zero" so. Watch out everyone. Math is about to get a lot more... IDK ... but MORE.
@futurebird …and I thought things got complex when multiplying by `sqrt(-1)`.
Then again IEEE-754 defines both +0.0 and -0.0 as distinct values.
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The nice thing that happened in class today:
Grade 5 students solve a puzzle where they put cuneiform numbers in order (there is no guidance, just work with the symbols, how do you order them?)
I told them they are like archeologists cracking a code. They did it!
"But where is zero?"
"It wasn't invented yet." I said this seriously. I mean ... it's true.Later that day the same student asked if it was a joke. I got to tell them no! Zero had to be invented. Everything had to be invented!
I get their surprise, I was already in university when I learnt that the Christian calendar that I use every day (not sure how it's called in English, the one with years BC and AD) doesn't have a year zero between 1 BC and AD 1.
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This student wants to "invent a new zero" so. Watch out everyone. Math is about to get a lot more... IDK ... but MORE.
@futurebird
I hope they name it better than imaginary numbers -
This student wants to "invent a new zero" so. Watch out everyone. Math is about to get a lot more... IDK ... but MORE.
@futurebird less is more in this case
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The nice thing that happened in class today:
Grade 5 students solve a puzzle where they put cuneiform numbers in order (there is no guidance, just work with the symbols, how do you order them?)
I told them they are like archeologists cracking a code. They did it!
"But where is zero?"
"It wasn't invented yet." I said this seriously. I mean ... it's true.Later that day the same student asked if it was a joke. I got to tell them no! Zero had to be invented. Everything had to be invented!
Summer reading
Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea
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This student wants to "invent a new zero" so. Watch out everyone. Math is about to get a lot more... IDK ... but MORE.
@futurebird but in seriousness, there is more actual mathematics in this question (can I have a second zero) than in all the calculations we do in school "maths".
Have them write down rules how to use and calculate with their new zero and have them check if they are consistent, and think about a way to check if indeed the two zeroes are truly different numbers, even if they fail to carry that all out, they'll learn a lot about the spirit of mathematics beyond the very limited confines of school "maths" -
@futurebird Dedekind showed that any two models of Peano arithmetic are isomorphic. In laymen's terms, if there is something that works like we expect arithmetic to, it will have just the one zero.
This is not obvious, and your student is to be commended for trying things out!
@bassthang @futurebird they should definitely try!
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@futurebird
I hope they name it better than imaginary numbers -
This student wants to "invent a new zero" so. Watch out everyone. Math is about to get a lot more... IDK ... but MORE.
@futurebird I wish I had that “math” class that inspired “zero indignation” -
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@futurebird I wish I had that “math” class that inspired “zero indignation” -
@dahukanna @futurebird But Dawn, Myrmi, we kinda did, dint we? Like, how would we know, otherwise?
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@dahukanna @futurebird But Dawn, Myrmi, we kinda did, dint we? Like, how would we know, otherwise?
@dahukanna @futurebird I was once asked what book a 13yo should read about math. I said "give'em Eric Bell's _Men of Mathematics_".
The book is well-written, and it's full of scurrilous gossip and silly legendary bullshit.
But at 13, we don't really need to know the truth of everything. We need to know that math really *matters*, we need to know that actual *people* made math.
Bell's a great story-teller, and at 13 we need to know we are part of a story.
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@dahukanna @futurebird I was once asked what book a 13yo should read about math. I said "give'em Eric Bell's _Men of Mathematics_".
The book is well-written, and it's full of scurrilous gossip and silly legendary bullshit.
But at 13, we don't really need to know the truth of everything. We need to know that math really *matters*, we need to know that actual *people* made math.
Bell's a great story-teller, and at 13 we need to know we are part of a story.
@GeePawHill - 1,000,000%
@futurebird has me remote attending her class making cards right now for that exercise, engaging my curiosity and play. I would be literally skipping iin to class, waiting in anticipation for “math-drama” challenge.
I’m NOT doing the work because of “standard” test and I was not thinking about “inventing zero” pre-university.
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@GeePawHill - 1,000,000%
@futurebird has me remote attending her class making cards right now for that exercise, engaging my curiosity and play. I would be literally skipping iin to class, waiting in anticipation for “math-drama” challenge.
I’m NOT doing the work because of “standard” test and I was not thinking about “inventing zero” pre-university.
@dahukanna @futurebird Yep. Cuz we're an us.
