• @affiliate
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    634 months 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.

    • @pyre
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      524 months ago

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

    • @Maalus
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      284 months 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

      • @Buddahriffic
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        184 months 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 ] ).

        • Fushuan [he/him]
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          104 months ago

          You forgot i, j, k

          It’s actually x, y, z, a, b, c, i, j, k, e, and then whatever, they don’t matter.

          • 2deck
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            54 months ago

            You forgot p, q

            They can be handy and come before e

        • @thesporkeffect
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          14 months ago

          What set of poor life choices led you to that??

          (Kidding)

      • @affiliate
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        74 months 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

          • @CrazyLikeGollum
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            24 months ago

            Just be sure to do it in binary. You gotta squeeze all of the value out of those phalanges.

            • Dragon Rider (drag)
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              14 months 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.

              • @[email protected]
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                14 months 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.

        • @someacnt_
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          24 months ago

          Counting cohomology has done to me a numbers x_x

          • @affiliate
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            34 months ago

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

      • @Atlas_
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        14 months ago

        Exactly. That’s why I refuse to do algebra.