Thankful Thursday
2022-02-10 02:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mdlbearToday I am grateful for...
- Distractions (not quite sufficient, but they help).
- E.g., vorpal rabbit holes, including the Riemann ΞΆ function, the related contention that 1 + 2 + 3 + ... = -1/12, Monstrous Moonshine, and the Monster Group.
- The associated math and physics videos on YouTube. (Follow links from the Monster Group lecture in 2.)
- The housemate responsible for describing said rabbit-hole as "vorpal".
- My other housemates, both human and feline. (I would have said two- and four-legged, but then I would have had to explicitly exclude rodents. Not that I have any of those at present -- see "felines".)
- Also with regard to Monstrous Moonshine, I'm grateful for my relationship with Colleen teaching me that it's okay to be obsessed with something I'm not likely ever to understand.
I'd be grateful for optimism if I had any. It seems to have gone missing.
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Date: 2022-02-11 12:13 am (UTC)I have NO idea what that maths means... for all I know, it could be magic. (or arithromancy) and I can feel my poor wee brain overheating trying to make sense of it. However I am seriously giggling at the names... and you're right about that being vorpal, it has sharp pointy teeth!
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Date: 2022-02-11 01:17 am (UTC)Part of the attraction for me is that it's far enough beyond my ability to understand it that I can keep coming back to it every so often and get a little more out of it.
Another part is that many professional mathematicians are almost as baffled as I am.
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Date: 2022-02-11 01:20 am (UTC)Well... I'm glad I'm not the only one looking at those arcane symbols and thinking 'wut?'
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Date: 2022-02-11 03:08 am (UTC)e^-Π/2 = i^i
works.
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Date: 2022-02-11 03:14 am (UTC)...
...
There's a number 2 in that, I recognise that at least. The rest, I got nothing!
I'm gonna go back to writing, in english... I know how to do that...mostly.
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Date: 2022-02-11 05:31 pm (UTC)Had to look this up -- What is i^i? - Math Central - University of Regina gives a pretty good explanation. Basically it's because the exponential function is very closely related to trig functions, which in turn is because multiplying a complex number by i rotates it 90° counterclockwise on the complex plane. (The relationship is also pretty obvious if you look at their infinite series expansions.)