Glitch in the matrix

Toes♀@ani.social to 196@lemmy.blahaj.zone – 416 points –
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It's pretty common even in academic literature to treat implied multiplication as having higher precedence than explicit multiplication/division. Otherwise an expression like 1 / 2n would have to be interpreted as (1 / 2) * n rather than the more natural 1 / (2 * n).

A lot of this bullshit can be avoided with better notation systems, but calculators tend to be limited in what you can write, so meh. Unless you want to mislead people for the memes, just put parentheses around things.

That's fair. Personally, I just have a grudge against math notation in general. Makes my programmer brain hurt when there's no consistency and a lot of implicit rules.

Then again, I also like Lisp so I'm not exactly without sin.

As a musician, can I just say: I would give my right nut for a musical notation system that is as clearly defined as mathematical notation. The worst part is that everyone that attempts to fix musical notation, just creates a new standard of notation.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Eq3bUFgEcb4

I know what video you linked even without clicking lol. Yeah, I can agree there. Although my only experience with music was "try to learn guitar, get distracted because ADHD".

The rocksmith game might help you.

Even guitarhero/rockband will help you with using your fingers and will help when you want to try a real guitar. Muscle memory might not be great but for someone who is just doing it for fun it will be helpful getting your fretting and strumming coordination. And them being games might help fend off the adhd enough to keep you motivated to pick it up again after putting it down

I appreciate the sentiment, but I really don't have time for another hobby.

I did accidentally become a DM for not one but two DnD groups recently.

I started with piano, technically, but I was 3-4 years old, and don't remember any of it. I can sit a piano and make it sound good, but I can't play sheet music on it. I switched to violin in second grade, and then just learned how to play everything except for rhythm guitar, and piano. Chords mess with my fingers. Strangely enough my ADHD allowed me to super focus, but I never got the hang of sight reading, so I mostly play by ear, but no one can tell.

I can even play a didgeridoo, and that required me to learn circular breathing.

That's impressive!

My ADHD just makes me lose time. Blink and the day is just gone.

The problem is whether or not that rule is taught depends on when and where you learned it. Schools only started teaching that rule relatively recently, and even then, not universally. Which of course makes for ideal engagement bait on your hellsite of choice.

Schools only started teaching that rule relatively recently

Recently? The order of operations rules have been taught for more than a century (we can see them in Lennes' letter).

Order of operations in general, yes. Implied multiplication coming before explicit multiplication/division is what's recent.

Implied multiplication coming before explicit multiplication/division is what’s recent.

  1. "implicit multiplication" is not taught, because there's no such thing as implicit multiplication
  2. the "controversy" over it isn't recent either - we can see Lennes complaining about it more than 100 years ago! The more things change the more they stay the same (sigh).
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