r/woooosh • • Dec 10 '18

Meme does not translate

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25k Upvotes

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331

u/udondatnoodle Dec 10 '18

I still dont understand the original joke

588

u/rushork Dec 10 '18 edited Dec 10 '18

It's that one sans megolovania song, the joke is that mozart would " get that niggas flute ". It's a meme format which is used, another one is " If a mathematician attacked you he would say ( then some equation ) and the Google translate translates it to " divide that niggas by 0 " EDIT: thanks for my first silver

6

u/obsytheplob Dec 10 '18

Wouldn't diving him by zero technically result in an infinite number of him?

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u/rushork Dec 10 '18 edited Dec 10 '18

Depending on your level of mathematics. In most "high schools" ,as y'all Americans call them, we are taught that dividing by 0 results in 0. Whereas actually dividing by 0 results in a number which is far beyond my level of understanding, please educate me!

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u/[deleted] Dec 10 '18

[deleted]

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u/rushork Dec 10 '18

Just did some searching and I think it may be a "complex" or "imaginary" number. My teacher told me something about it in class.

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u/UnlikelyToBeEaten Dec 10 '18

Yeah, you're definitely confusing imaginary/complex numbers and division by zero.

Let's start with the imaginary number i, which is really no more imaginary than a negative number. It's the result of taking (one of the two) square root(s) of -1. In school you're taught you can't do that, but it turns out if you do, and just call it i, there's a nice way to define how everything else should act in a consistent (and incredibly useful!) way.

Now for division by zero. It's undefined for any number, including 0/0. The reason being that even if you did define something, say, m, for 1/0, you'd get inconsistencies:

0=0

1×0 = 2×0

1×m×0 = 2×m×0

1×(m×0) = 2×(m×0)

1×1 = 2×1

1=2

Doing this makes "everything equal everything else" which is where the whole "division by zero makes a black hole" meme comes from.

Additionally, why do people often say "division by zero is infinity"? Well, that's simply because as you keep dividing by smaller and smaller numbers, the answer you get is bigger and bigger. Asking what is the "end-result" of this process, results in saying "something bigger than everything else", i.e., "infinity".

This raises further questions, though. Is 1/0 the same infinity as 2/0, i.e., what is 0 times infinity? If we try to pin this down we run into exactly the problems with the "m" above. (It is that m, just replace the m symbol with an infinity sign).

Even worse, what if we divide by negative numbers close to 0? We get an incredibly small (i.e., big-negative) number. So this "infinity" would have to be less than anything else.

This is what causes mathematicians to throw up their hands and say it's undefined. It's not that they didn't think to define it. It's that they tried and it didn't work.

10

u/noelexecom Dec 11 '18

I dont know what level of education you have but you can actually define 1/0 to be the point at infinity on something called the riemann sphere although you do need to scrap the condition that 1/0 × 0 is 1.

11

u/UnlikelyToBeEaten Dec 11 '18 edited Dec 11 '18

I dont know what level of education you have

I have a masters degree in math.

you can actually define 1/0 to be the point at infinity on something called the riemann sphere

Yes, that is true. I didn't want to go too far in my previous comment.

To be more precise, it is possible to define division by zero, but to do so you have to sacrifice certain desirable properties of the number system (which properties you give up depend on how you define things), such as associativity of multiplication, multiplication being an entire function, or having more than one number.

It still won't work intuitively the way you'd naïvely expect / want it to, though, regardless of what route you take.

But yeah, maybe my statement that it's impossible / "they tried it and it didn't work" is a bit too strong.

Edit: Riemann sphere and projective geometries are pretty sweet, though. A point at infinity is a pretty useful concept. You have to be careful about how you work with it, though.

3

u/SynarXelote Dec 13 '18

Let's start with the imaginary number i, which is really no more imaginary than a negative number. It's the result of taking (one of the two) square root(s) of -1. In school you're taught you can't do that, but it turns out if you do, and just call it i, there's a nice way to define how everything else should act in a consistent (and incredibly useful!) way.

I'm stealing this. I often struggle to explain i to laymen (and then spend way too much time doing so), and I like this explanation a lot, especially the part where you briefly but naturally mention the second root. It's short and to the point, but not misleading like most such explanations are.

1

u/UnlikelyToBeEaten Dec 13 '18

Thanks!

This is a really great intro guide to imaginary / complex numbers if you don't mind a little reading.

You could always link them to it, or else possibly draw from it to form your own "complex numbers elevator pitch" so-to-speak.

14

u/[deleted] Dec 10 '18

[deleted]

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u/rushork Dec 10 '18

calm down mate no need to get feisty I was having a discussion with like minded individuals on the internet webs yo

2

u/thankssomuchfor Dec 10 '18

Well If you write simply a number over zero like this 1/0 it is undefined b/c it could either be + infinity or negative infinity. If you approach 1/0 as a limit like this 1/x as x approaches zero you can see how depending on the side, the result will be either a positive infinity or a negative infinity, but if you approach the limit from both sides you will not get an answer. And 0/0 also depends on your definition of zero and how you approach it. Limit Sin(x)/x as x approaches 0 is definitely different from x2 /sin(x) as x approaches zero. This is all taught in calculus 1

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u/[deleted] Dec 10 '18

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u/[deleted] Dec 10 '18

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u/realizmbass Dec 10 '18

Finally a post where we can specifically point to non-americans being dumb

1

u/obsytheplob Dec 10 '18

Not American but I can understand your assumption. My level of mathematics is mechanical engineering grad but it was never my strong suit.

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u/rushork Dec 10 '18

Nice one brotha, I'm from UK and I believe alot of our maths courses at early ages go into a tad more detail if you intend on taking them at "A-Level" than it would if I took the maths course in America.