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sniffnoySo today Glenn had a race to see who could find the continued fraction of √199 faster - a student (specifically, me) with a calculator, or him with the Super Magic Box. Not only was the continued fraction ridiculously long, but more importantly, the calculator's approximations added up. Where the partial quotient was 13, the calculator said 12, completely destroying any chance I may have had of winning. My inability to copy the numbers from the calculator correctly would have made me lose, but it didn't even matter.
But now we have the Super Magic Box. Well, sort of. The pattern in the Magic Box, while it took us a while to figure out, was ridiculously simple once we found it, and I'm surprised we didn't see it earlier. But the Super Magic Box (which is for finding the continued fraction of a square root), it seems, is much more subtle. There are 3 rules that govern it; the first 2, while certainly weirder than the Magic Box, are not actually bizarre, and we were able to figure them out. The third, we have not. Second-years have told me, however, that it doesn't just involve addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. That hasn't helped.
Inspecting my cards after the rains of yesterday, it seems most of my decks are OK, or only slightly and non-fatally damaged. However, my deck of normal playing cards is completely ruined (unsurprisingly; it's a curse, I tell you), and my Knightmare Chess (2, actually - I don't have the original) may never be usable again. The foldable chessboard has also had even more of its color leak around, despite the fact that it's black and white.
It appears that the Council of Doom will be performing Four Yorkshire Men, the Argument Clinic, and the Spanish Inquisition. Today at dinner we decided who will play what parts. Of course, it'll probably turn out pretty bad anyway, considering that the talent show is on Friday and we haven't even practiced yet. We plan to do so at midnight, apparently so that we're all tired and make stupid mistakes.
Such as misapplying the distributive law. This is from a while back, but I never posted it here, so I'm doing so now. I wrote that a*(b+c) = (a+b) * (b+c). Well, actually they weren't addition and multiplication, they were some boolean operations, and I was *testing* to *see* if one was distributive over the other, but that's not the point. Not really nearly as badly, Chris, attempting to give the series for e last night, accidentally gave one for sinh(1) instead.
This was part of a long discussion which started out with Josh the Counselor having us construct the rationals from the integers. Actually it probably started with something else, but eventually it reached that point. Since it was late at night, we didn't bother to prove everything, but we could all see that it wouldn't have been hard to do so. However, somehow it got to constructing the reals from the rationals, which resulted in Cameron trying to explain Dedekind (sp?) cuts to me. Well, explaining some of it, and having me figure other parts out. Such as how to add and multiply them. Addition is easy, but while Cameron insists there is a clean, consistent way to multiply them, I can't find it. Not that I've thought about it a lot, admittedly. That's probably going to haunt me for a while (until I forget about it, or, by some rare chance, figure it out).
And now I will shut up, because 1. I ought to go work on my pset, and 2. I really need to go to the bathroom.
But now we have the Super Magic Box. Well, sort of. The pattern in the Magic Box, while it took us a while to figure out, was ridiculously simple once we found it, and I'm surprised we didn't see it earlier. But the Super Magic Box (which is for finding the continued fraction of a square root), it seems, is much more subtle. There are 3 rules that govern it; the first 2, while certainly weirder than the Magic Box, are not actually bizarre, and we were able to figure them out. The third, we have not. Second-years have told me, however, that it doesn't just involve addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. That hasn't helped.
Inspecting my cards after the rains of yesterday, it seems most of my decks are OK, or only slightly and non-fatally damaged. However, my deck of normal playing cards is completely ruined (unsurprisingly; it's a curse, I tell you), and my Knightmare Chess (2, actually - I don't have the original) may never be usable again. The foldable chessboard has also had even more of its color leak around, despite the fact that it's black and white.
It appears that the Council of Doom will be performing Four Yorkshire Men, the Argument Clinic, and the Spanish Inquisition. Today at dinner we decided who will play what parts. Of course, it'll probably turn out pretty bad anyway, considering that the talent show is on Friday and we haven't even practiced yet. We plan to do so at midnight, apparently so that we're all tired and make stupid mistakes.
Such as misapplying the distributive law. This is from a while back, but I never posted it here, so I'm doing so now. I wrote that a*(b+c) = (a+b) * (b+c). Well, actually they weren't addition and multiplication, they were some boolean operations, and I was *testing* to *see* if one was distributive over the other, but that's not the point. Not really nearly as badly, Chris, attempting to give the series for e last night, accidentally gave one for sinh(1) instead.
This was part of a long discussion which started out with Josh the Counselor having us construct the rationals from the integers. Actually it probably started with something else, but eventually it reached that point. Since it was late at night, we didn't bother to prove everything, but we could all see that it wouldn't have been hard to do so. However, somehow it got to constructing the reals from the rationals, which resulted in Cameron trying to explain Dedekind (sp?) cuts to me. Well, explaining some of it, and having me figure other parts out. Such as how to add and multiply them. Addition is easy, but while Cameron insists there is a clean, consistent way to multiply them, I can't find it. Not that I've thought about it a lot, admittedly. That's probably going to haunt me for a while (until I forget about it, or, by some rare chance, figure it out).
And now I will shut up, because 1. I ought to go work on my pset, and 2. I really need to go to the bathroom.
