On 02/02/2012 03:07 AM, Darren New wrote:
> On 1/31/2012 8:43, Kevin Wampler wrote:
>> I have the same intuition, although I don't care enough to code it up
>> work out the details.
>
> I tried that on math tests a couple times. It didn't fly. :-)

Huh. It worked for Pierre de Fermat. :-P

But I have to say I'm relieved. Sometimes I worry that education has 
sunk to the level where that kind of thing might be OK. Like when I paid 
for university tuition only to have some professor of computer science 
tell me that "float supports numbers up to about 2^38 which is, oh, far 
more than the number of atoms in the entire universe".

(Pro tip: Number of atoms in 12g of carbon = 2^77 or so. The number of 
atoms in the /entire universe/ is clearly much, much larger.)

Post a reply to this message