post — wasteof

mef — 5/4/2024, 12:33:59 AM

to all of the people saying “its easy, I can do it in my head” I’m not talking about factoring an orderly quadratic I’m talking about simplifying a monstrosity like this:

you really think you could simplify THIS in your head

(tbf this isn’t actually that hard of a problem, but like, you get what I mean?)

↩ repost

mef — 5/3/2024, 7:57:23 PM

fun fact:

trying to do algebra without writing things down is like trying to assemble something in your hands without a table

guess what happens when you try to do that with something big and complicated

you drop and break stuff

♥ 7 ↩ 3 💬 2 comments

♥ 3 ↩ 0 💬 12 comments

pkmnq:

I haven’t encountered this kind of thing before so I don’t know what the goal is but here’s something that looks simplified:

60 - 300/(2x^3 + 5x^2) - 155/(2x^2 + 5x) - 85/(2x + 5)

5/4/2024, 4:49:46 AM

zagle1772:

when you have A/(B+C), you split it in to A/B+A/C

5/4/2024, 10:27:35 AM

pkmnq:

i tried to split them but i couldn’t figure out how

5/4/2024, 11:13:18 AM

zagle1772:

60 - 300/2x^3 + 300/5x^2 - 155/2x^2 - 155/5x - 85/2x - 85/5

and then

60 - 150/x^3 + 60/x^2 - 77.5/x^2 - 31/x - 42.5/x - 17

and then

43 - 150/x^3 - 17.5/x^2 - 73.5/x

which can also be written as

+43x^0 -73.5x^-1 -17.5x^-2 -150x^-3

5/5/2024, 1:05:00 PM

mef:

congratulations, I just made you do algebra for no reason >:D

(do you agree that writing it down makes it easier?)

5/5/2024, 1:36:45 PM

zagle1772:

very much so

5/5/2024, 2:19:02 PM

pkmnq:

that’s not how that works

take, for example,

1/5 = 1/(2+3)
1/2 + 1/3 = 5/6
1/5 != 5/6
therefore, the assumption that ∀x. ∀y. ∀z. x/(y+z) = x/y = x/z is false ∎

5/5/2024, 2:26:56 PM

pkmnq:

i did none of this in my head by the way all of this was written down

5/5/2024, 2:29:54 PM

zagle1772:

holy heck i really am stupid

5/5/2024, 6:04:11 PM