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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: October 19th, 2023

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  • You got downvoted here but you’re absolutely right. It’s easy to prove that the set of strings with prime length is not a regular language using the pumping lemma for regular languages. And in typical StackExchange fashion, someone’s already done it.

    Here’s their proof.

    Claim 1: The language consisting of the character 1 repeated a prime number of times is not regular.

    A further argument to justify your claim—

    Claim 2: If the language described in Claim 1 is not regular, then the language consisting of the character 1 repeated a composite number of times is not regular.

    Proof: Suppose the language described in Claim 2 is regular if the language described in Claim 1 is not. Then there must exist a finite-state automaton A that recognises it. If we create a new finite-state automaton B which (1) checks whether the string has length 1 and rejects it, and (2) then passes the string to automaton A and rejects when automaton A accepts and accepts when automaton A rejects, then we can see that automaton B accepts the set of all strings of non-composite length that are not of length 1, i.e. the set of all strings of prime length. But since the language consisting of all strings of prime length is non-regular, there cannot exist such an automaton. Therefore, the assumption that the language described in Claim 2 being regular is false.




  • “Woke” originally meant “aware of and well-informed about systemic social issues affecting everyday people”. Conservatives have co-opted this word and use it to describe anything associated with leftism or social liberalism. It is intended to be negative in that context.

    “DEI” stands for “diversity, equity, and inclusion”. It refers to policies that intentionally include people of diverse or minority backgrounds in the context of employment or political appointment. Conservatives use it to describe (in their view) hiring practices that select less-qualified candidates of these backgrounds against the favour of those who may be more qualified. In that usage, a “DEI hire” or “diversity hire” is a person hired or appointed solely on the basis of their race, gender, or some other status as a minority even though they are not qualified for the role.




  • Rulers measure cardinal quantities and not ordinal ones. There is no cardinal numbering scheme that starts at 1, all of them “start” at 0. For ordinal numbering schemes, the symbols are arbitrary anyway and you can start with whatever you want. It’s equally valid to start with 1, 0, -1, A, or “aardvark”. The only benefit to picking 1 as the start is to make it easier to count with your fingers while picking 0 lets you easily convert an ordinal quantity to a cardinal one.