Superiority Complex

It's only semi autobiographical

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Had a bit of an argument with my housemates last night. It was over something trivial, well trivial to them. They just can not seem to understand how it is important to me, and other people like me. Small minded fools.

It is like this really, they are physicists, I am a mathematician.

I hear one of them call me, asking a question "What is zero times infinity..."

I paused, knowing what was coming next...

"It's zero isn't it?"
"Well, not as such...."
"Well, is it infinity then?"
"Er, kind of..."

It then transpired that they were not in fact doing this, they were multiplying two things, one of which tended to zero, the other to infinity, that is x*e^(-x) as x tends to ~~infinity~~ zero.

Anyway, this tends to infinity, but they would not believe me, insisting that anything times zero was zero. I tried to convince them... but they are physicists after all.

"Our lecturer warned us there would be people like you!" Was their parting shot as they went upstairs to get their maths wrong.

Now I'm bored, andI'm going home.

Posted by: Complex / 2:01 pm

Comments:

awww, thanks rich, u have this unrivalled ability to make me feel so much better about my life!!

# posted by

Anonymous : 11:13 pm

Um, I'm pretty sure x*e(-x) actually DOES tend to zero as x tends to infinity Rich. The exponential function is far more powerful than that weedy x.

A better example would be e(x)/x.

But too much maths is bad for you.....

# posted by

Mr K : 3:36 am

Quite right, I made an error while I was writing, I of course meant as x tends to zero, I have now corrected this.

# posted by

Complex : 11:47 am

I hate to say it Rich..... but that doesn't work either.......

e^0=1.........

# posted by

Mr K : 8:34 pm

loads of saddos, thank you all

# posted by

Anonymous : 7:40 pm

Superiority Complex

Links

Archives

Tuesday, November 23, 2004