• affiliate@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    16 days ago

    i was in a group call with 6 mathematicians, and it came time to order our names in the paper we were writing. in math papers, the names are always ordered alphabetically. we had to pull up a picture of the alphabet because none of us could remember which way the letters are ordered.

    • Maalus@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      16 days ago

      You guys are mathematicians not letterematicians.

      Also, I’m doing engineering shit and I still need to count using my fingers when calculating something on a multiplication table

      • affiliate@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        16 days ago

        exactly!

        and i am always in favor of counting with fingers. we were given them for a reason, might as well make the most of them. counting is hard enough as it is

            • Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nz
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              16 days ago

              That’s impossible, because it would require tracking each digit at once. Counting in binary is kind of possible with fingers, but not with phalanges.

              • Shareni@programming.dev
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                0
                ·
                16 days ago

                Counting in binary is kind of possible with fingers

                Kind of? It’s quite possible and easy. I spent an afternoon counting syllables to create shitty poetry, and my fingers started counting on their own. Now I can count to 31 on 1 hand and it’s surprisingly useful.

          • affiliate@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            16 days ago

            yeah cohomology can be particularly rough. look on the bright side though, at least you now have the tools to answer this question:

      • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        16 days ago

        As a math guy, obviously the order of the letters is: x, y, z, a, b, c, then the rest of them in whatever order I currently feel like.

        As a CS guy, obviously the order is sort( [ set of all letters ] ).

    • pyre@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      16 days ago

      memorizing the order of the alphabet would take precious real estate that could instead hold a couple more digits of pi