++ ATOT official NEF thread part IV ++

Page 1514 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

MotF Bane

No Lifer
Dec 22, 2006
60,801
10
0
No it's not less accurate because one of the numbers you multiplied by was 0.9 and that is only 1 sig fig. So that reduces the accuracy of your answer to 1 sig fig.

That doesn't matter.

Look, if I don't say a word about sig fig, and hand you three numbers to multiply, are you going to arbitrarily decide that something equaling 615.916 should be truncated to 600, because the last number is 0.9? Of course not. If you did, your math professor would mark the whole mess wrong, and probably with a gigantic red question mark wondering why the hell you did that.

So what makes it any more right for sig fig? Maybe, MAYBE, you have a case if you know for a fact that we're playing with a balance and a graduated cylinder and a meterstick, but even then, you're on shaky ground. But as it is, this is a theoretical equation, there are no real world applications tied to it.
 

MotF Bane

No Lifer
Dec 22, 2006
60,801
10
0
W.T.F.

Limits ARE calculus. The underlying foundation of calculus is the concept of limits, nothing else!

I'll be honest, my grasp of limits is a little fuzzy. I can work with them to some extent (that one with the h's thrown in messes me up), but that's not my point here. I know limits are the basis of calculus, I can see how they make calculus function, but it seems so logical and natural that I don't feel the need to go further on it. I feel no compulsion to be able to prove it, just as I have no interest in Riemann sums and all that stuff. Far smarter people than me have dedicated more decades to proving that stuff than I plan to be in academia for - I'm not interested in recreating the wheel. Thanks for making the wheel and showing me how to use it, I'll keep doing that.
 

MotF Bane

No Lifer
Dec 22, 2006
60,801
10
0
Limits are the concept that adding or subtracting an INFINITE number of smaller and smaller numbers can, in many cases, lead to a definite concrete definite result. Similar to the old 0.999999999999.... = 1 argument. Limits are the underlying foundation of all of calculus.

It's the old half the distance half the distance half the distance joke.

Actually, no, the joke goes more like this:

A scientist, a mathematician, and an engineer are each taken separately, in turns, into a room. In this room, a researcher says that once per minute, the participant will cross half the distance to a gorgeous woman standing at the other side of the room.

The scientist and the mathematician both say they're not doing it, and leave, protesting that they'll never get there.

The engineer grins, and says, "okay!"
The researcher replies, "but you'll never get to where she's standing."
The engineer answers, "but I'll be close enough for all practical purposes."
 

MotF Bane

No Lifer
Dec 22, 2006
60,801
10
0
And now I'll segue that back into my disinterest in extensive exploration of limits and Riemann sums and all of that - I don't need to see how it works, who came up with it, why they thought it worked, or be able to prove it all again myself. In practical terms, I just need to be able to use it.

So although I can't actually build an impact gun myself, or tell you the exact mechanisms inside it, or prove to you why those little pieces make the thing work, I know exactly how to use it, including that you let the air pressure build to deal with overtorque lugs.
 

IndyColtsFan

Lifer
Sep 22, 2007
33,655
688
126
704px-Amiga_1000DP.jpg
 

janas19

Platinum Member
Nov 10, 2011
2,313
1
0
I am the king of neffers. Not by quantity, but by quality. And by quality, I mean lack of making people laugh.

Yep.
 

MotF Bane

No Lifer
Dec 22, 2006
60,801
10
0
I think I just found a new and far quicker and vastly easier method to do that problem he showed in class that doesn't work. :D