this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] benignintervention@lemmy.world 79 points 1 week ago (14 children)

I found math in physics to have this really fun duality of "these are rigorous rules that must be followed" and "if we make a set of edge case assumptions, we can fit the square peg in the round hole"

Also I will always treat the derivative operator as a fraction

[–] MyTurtleSwimsUpsideDown@fedia.io 62 points 1 week ago (3 children)

2+2 = 5

…for sufficiently large values of 2

[–] Quill7513@slrpnk.net 23 points 1 week ago

i was in a math class once where a physics major treated a particular variable as one because at csmic scale the value of the variable basically doesn't matter. the math professor both was and wasn't amused

[–] Lemmyoutofhere@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 week ago (4 children)
[–] jaupsinluggies@feddit.uk 8 points 1 week ago

Statistician: 1+1=sqrt(2)

[–] WR5@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

I mean as an engineer, this should actually be 2+2=4 +/-1.

[–] umbraroze@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Computer science: 2+2=4 (for integers at least; try this with floating point numbers at your own peril, you absolute fool)

[–] callyral@pawb.social 5 points 1 week ago

0.1 + 0.2 = 0.30000000000000004

[–] socsa@piefed.social 1 points 1 week ago

Freshmen engineer: wow floating point numbers are great.

Senior engineer: actually the distribution of floating point errors is mindfuck.

Professional engineer: the mean error for all pairwaise 64 bit floating point operations is smaller than the Planck constant.

comparing floats for exact equality should be illegal, IMO

[–] bhamlin@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Found the engineer

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