On Fri, 04 Jul 2008 12:30:38 +0100, Invisible wrote:

> Either way, laughing at me isn't helping anything, is it? :-P

At some point you're bound to learn to laugh at yourself.  ;-)

But more to the point, you demonstrated McKean's Law, as described on 
Wikipedia as:

"Any correction of the speech or writing of others will contain at least 
one grammatical, spelling, or typographical error"

(aka Skitt's Law)

While not precisely what happened here, it's that type of irony; even 
you've got to appreciate the irony and see the humour in it. ;-)

Jim

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>> (Seriously - why the hell does anybody in the modern era need to be
>> fluent at long division?

Ever tried dividing one polynomial by another?  A useful skill if you're 
doing Laplace transforms and stuff that need polynomials in certain forms. 
Without knowing how to do long division with numbers, you'd be stuffed to 
try and divide a polynomial.

>  Is it really so that in the US, the UK and other places everybody has
> to explicitly fill out tax forms each year, specifying all their income,
> tax reductions, etc?


or if you have some "special" items, like company car, shares, working 
abroad, or basically anything that is non-standard.

>  Here in Finland all that is automatic: You receive a pre-filled form
> with all your income, tax reductions, etc. already put in. If everything
> is correct, you don't have to do anything about it. Only if there's
> something not in the form already (for example some significant payment
> which has not been notified to the tax officials, or something which is
> worth tax reductions) you'll have to add it to the form and return it.

Which is essentially what you do on the UK form too, if you get one. 
Everyone gets a "P60" form that tells you how much income you got and how 
much tax you paid over the last year.  You simply copy&paste those two 
numbers onto your tax return form.  The rest of the tax form is for other 
items.  I suspect a lot of people simply leave 90% of the form blank (there 
are many many optional sections).

It can get complicated if you are a family, paying a mortgage with two kids 
at university, have a company car and shares in the company you work for. 
You just need to sit down and read through the guidelines carefully to work 
out which numbers to put in which boxes.  Of course, many people just pay 
someone else to do it for them who is much more familiar with the system.

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>>> (Seriously - why the hell does anybody in the modern era need to be
>>> fluent at long division?
> 
> Ever tried dividing one polynomial by another?

No.

And you know why?

Because I don't know what polynomial division actually "is" yet.

(Remember: I've never been taught algebra. I just read books when I have 
time...)

> Without knowing how to do long division with numbers, you'd be 
> stuffed to try and divide a polynomial.

I didn't say you don't need to know how to do long division - I said you 
don't need to spend 3 years practising it for several hours per day.

>>  Is it really so that in the US, the UK and other places everybody has
>> to explicitly fill out tax forms each year, specifying all their income,
>> tax reductions, etc?
> 
> In the UK it's only if you pay tax in the highest band (earn more than 

> working abroad, or basically anything that is non-standard.

Thanks for clarifying that. I was wondering myself!

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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>>   No such thing as useless knowledge.
> 
> How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? ;-)

I'm going to have to Google this one, aren't I? :-P

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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> Because I don't know what polynomial division actually "is" yet.

Opposite of polynomial multiplication.

(x^3+3x^2-4x)/(x^2-x) = ???

> I didn't say you don't need to know how to do long division - I said you 
> don't need to spend 3 years practising it for several hours per day.

It makes things later in life, assuming you go on with studying maths, a lot 
easier.  At university I used to cringe at the people who used their 
calculators so often to do what they really should be doing in their head. 
When you are tackling a large problem it is a huge advantage do be able to 
do at least the basics very quickly in your head.

> Thanks for clarifying that. I was wondering myself!

Since I'm living in Germany I don't pay UK tax anymore, but I asked them to 
repay me some bank interest tax (it was a relatively small amount, like 


because I didn't return it by the deadline (even though the deadline had 
passed by the time I got the form!!!).


long time and a lot of effort - not sure if that was a profitable use of my 
time though!

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On Fri, 04 Jul 2008 12:34:19 +0100, Invisible wrote:

> Practicing long division over and over and over and over again, for many
> years on end, is a completely waste of time IMHO. Once you know how to
> do long division, you know how to do long division. What possible
> purpose could there be in spending years doing it over and over again?

Some people need more practice than others.

Jim

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On Fri, 04 Jul 2008 13:10:46 +0100, Invisible wrote:

>>>   No such thing as useless knowledge.
>> 
>> How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? ;-)
> 
> I'm going to have to Google this one, aren't I? :-P

LOL, you're learning. ;-)

Jim

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>> Because I don't know what polynomial division actually "is" yet.
> 
> Opposite of polynomial multiplication.
> 
> (x^3+3x^2-4x)/(x^2-x) = ???

As I understand it, the product of two polynomials is a formula that 
produces the same result as running the two polynomials and then taking 
the product of their answers. And this product is guaranteed to always 
be a polynomial.

It is not immediately clear to be that the quotient of two polynomials 
is necessarily a polynomial.

>> I didn't say you don't need to know how to do long division - I said 
>> you don't need to spend 3 years practising it for several hours per day.
> 
> It makes things later in life, assuming you go on with studying maths, a 
> lot easier.  At university I used to cringe at the people who used their 
> calculators so often to do what they really should be doing in their 
> head. When you are tackling a large problem it is a huge advantage do be 
> able to do at least the basics very quickly in your head.

Hell, I can't even multiply numbers in my head!

I'm good at understanding principles and elligant mathematical theories. 
I'm not good at memorising vast amounts of unstructured data.

And if you think your experience was bad, imagine being in a room full 
of undergraduates and finding that only 2 of them know what "logarithm" 
means. (Obviously one was me. The other one was that crazy rugby player 
from Manchester. I remember at the time feeling quite guilty for 
assuming he was stupid just because has acted like a complete psychopath 
all day long...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On Fri, 04 Jul 2008 14:18:28 +0200, scott wrote:

> Since I'm living in Germany I don't pay UK tax anymore,

That's nice.  We've been thinking about moving to the UK for a few years 
now, but if we earn over a certain amount in the UK, we still have to pay 
US taxes as well as UK taxes.

Jim

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> That's nice.  We've been thinking about moving to the UK for a few years
> now, but if we earn over a certain amount in the UK, we still have to pay
> US taxes as well as UK taxes.

That really is crazy.  How do they justify taxing you when you are not even 
living there?  Does that mean that anyone born in USA must (potentially) pay 
USA taxes for the rest of their life no matter in which country they live? 
What a hassle!

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