Always remember: The harmonic series diverges.
This post will be about math. Why not?
First of all, nice quote.
"Today I said to the calculus students, "I know, you're looking at this series and you don't see what I'm warning you about. You look and it and you think, 'I trust this series. I would take candy from this series. I would get in a car with this series.' But I'm going to warn you, this series is out to get you. Always remember: The harmonic series diverges. Never forget it.""
I can't say I forgot it. Or, at least, I believe I could think a bit and recreate this high point of medieval mathematics
on my own. Unfortunately, I forgeet something else: what harmonic series is. Actually, I hardly remember anything about any series. And I have BA in math.. Should I be sad about it? I don't know.
In general, it seems like many people that can hardly remember any math basics. Recently one user posted two problems, one tricky:
There are 100 coins and two empty wallets. How you put all the coins in those wallets so that the number of coins in one wallet is exactly twice then in the other?
and one dumm:
There are 100 houses on one street. You need to put numbers from one to hundred on them. How many '9's do you need?
I was suprised by the number of right answers to the tricky problem. But I was even more surprised by the number of wrong answers to the dumm problem. People (some people!) know to think creatively, but they (many of them!) just don't know to count. Looks like the ability to count is something unnatural that you lose if you don't practice.
First of all, nice quote.
"Today I said to the calculus students, "I know, you're looking at this series and you don't see what I'm warning you about. You look and it and you think, 'I trust this series. I would take candy from this series. I would get in a car with this series.' But I'm going to warn you, this series is out to get you. Always remember: The harmonic series diverges. Never forget it.""
I can't say I forgot it. Or, at least, I believe I could think a bit and recreate this high point of medieval mathematics
on my own. Unfortunately, I forgeet something else: what harmonic series is. Actually, I hardly remember anything about any series. And I have BA in math.. Should I be sad about it? I don't know.
In general, it seems like many people that can hardly remember any math basics. Recently one user posted two problems, one tricky:
There are 100 coins and two empty wallets. How you put all the coins in those wallets so that the number of coins in one wallet is exactly twice then in the other?
and one dumm:
There are 100 houses on one street. You need to put numbers from one to hundred on them. How many '9's do you need?
I was suprised by the number of right answers to the tricky problem. But I was even more surprised by the number of wrong answers to the dumm problem. People (some people!) know to think creatively, but they (many of them!) just don't know to count. Looks like the ability to count is something unnatural that you lose if you don't practice.