How to tell you ticked off a mathematician

[shardian]

This was sent in an email titled "how to tell you ticked off an Engineer". However, any real engineer knows only mathematicians would be this dorky.

I found it extra funny because I was pissed off with a doctors office that screwed me, and I took liberties with the check I sent in too. Long story short, the voided my check, sent it back to me in a Christmas card, and never billed me again. If I can find the check again, I suppose I should scan it.

[ChadTower]

Once upon a time I could solve that... now I just look at it and wonder how many other things from college I spent overnights learning and then never used.

[shardian]

Yeah, me too. I could relearn stuff like that pretty quick, but cold turkey it is long gone.

[SithMaster]

That's so awesome I'll be using a similar formula in the future for all my pissed off math needs.

Though shouldn't he have drawn in lines to the sides so no one would add to the formula?  Or is that something you should do but no one ever does?

[shardian]

I was taught to draw a line to the end of the amount line. Don;t really see the point, since anything past the xx/100 part would raise a red flag.

[shardian]

Variation: How to tell you pissed of  a Comp. Sci. major?

A. The check would be filled out in Klingon. 

[Todd H]

It's funny you guys mention forgetting this stuff. I have a degree in mathematics and graduated in 1995. I never did get a job in my field, becoming a computer instructor at a local college. I've found out recently that I've pretty much forgotten about everything I learned. Linear Algebra? Gone. Differentials? Gone. Euclidean and non-Euclidean Geometry? Gone. How sad is that?

[ChadTower]

Variation: How to tell you pissed of  a Comp. Sci. major?

A. The check would be filled out in Klingon. 

I never knew any of us that would know Klingon.  The Star Trek geeks were in EE.

I would probably fill it out in 6502 assembly.

[shardian]

It's funny you guys mention forgetting this stuff. I have a degree in mathematics and graduated in 1995. I never did get a job in my field, becoming a computer instructor at a local college. I've found out recently that I've pretty much forgotten about everything I learned. Linear Algebra? Gone. Differentials? Gone. Euclidean and non-Euclidean Geometry? Gone. How sad is that?

My degree is in ME. I am a glorified CAD technician though, so I have forgotten pretty much everything too. My job options were depressingly limited. I had 3 options:

1. Be a glorified supervisor that is salary, works ridiculous hours, and gets blamed for everything
2. Be a glorified CAD technician that gets to learn the construction biz, and get to practice basic hydraulic piping design.
3. Go back to school and get a Master's degree.

School was out because real life(TM) was in full effect. Supervisor was out because I didn't want to live at my job. I took this because it gave me a few years job experience as a resume booster.

If I would have knew what I REALLY would be doing with an ME degree, I would have NEVER went into Engineering.

[Todd H]

It's funny you guys mention forgetting this stuff. I have a degree in mathematics and graduated in 1995. I never did get a job in my field, becoming a computer instructor at a local college. I've found out recently that I've pretty much forgotten about everything I learned. Linear Algebra? Gone. Differentials? Gone. Euclidean and non-Euclidean Geometry? Gone. How sad is that?

My degree is in ME. I am a glorified CAD technician though, so I have forgotten pretty much everything too. My job options were depressingly limited. I had 3 options:

1. Be a glorified supervisor that is salary, works ridiculous hours, and gets blamed for everything
2. Be a glorified CAD technician that gets to learn the construction biz, and get to practice basic hydraulic piping design.
3. Go back to school and get a Master's degree.

School was out because real life(TM) was in full effect. Supervisor was out because I didn't want to live at my job. I took this because it gave me a few years job experience as a resume booster.

If I would have knew what I REALLY would be doing with an ME degree, I would have NEVER went into Engineering.

I know how you feel. I keep kicking myself for not getting a computer science degree. I'd love to go back to school and get one but with a wife, child, and mortgage that ain't happening.

[ChadTower]

I know how you feel. I keep kicking myself for not getting a computer science degree. I'd love to go back to school and get one but with a wife, child, and mortgage that ain't happening.

Heh... I'm in the same boat but have 3+ years of CS already done.  I was too busy doing internships and grad program work early to actually finish and then RL intruded. 

[shardian]

Oh, and not to mention I make ALOT less than what I ever thought I would. Out of college I had a job waiting for me with the Corps of Engineers. Unfortunately, the Corps was pretty much gutted during the first few years of the Iraq war. They quit hiring, laid off new hires, begged people to retire early, etc. I had a co-op contract that they let me out of scott free. While it was nice to get over $10k in schooling paid for, I lost out on a high paying office job with minimal work.

[ChadTower]

Man, when I think about how many unvested stock options I had in Cisco not long after I left school... if the crash had happened 18 months later I may not have ever had to work again.  Right startup, right place, handed more stock options than salary, bought by Cisco... vesting schedule 8 months too late.  By the time they vested it went from hundreds of thousands down to a few thousand that basically bought some furniture and paid some taxes.

[ClubNinja]

I never knew any of us that would know Klingon.  The Star Trek geeks were in EE.

I experienced the opposite - the CS guys really were the Star Trek geeks.  The EE crowd was surprisingly diverse.

[ChadTower]

Notice that everyone wants to call the other guys the Star Trek geeks.   

Maybe a different set of years.  Star Trek and Star Wars were pretty dormant when I was in college.  The big thing in CS then was the release of Quake II.  Half my class disappeared that semester.

[SavannahLion]

Oh, and not to mention I make ALOT less than what I ever thought I would. Out of college I had a job waiting for me with the Corps of Engineers. Unfortunately, the Corps was pretty much gutted during the first few years of the Iraq war. They quit hiring, laid off new hires, begged people to retire early, etc. I had a co-op contract that they let me out of scott free. While it was nice to get over $10k in schooling paid for, I lost out on a high paying office job with minimal work.

Please, don't make me cry. I don't like to be reminded of my mistakes.

While I was going to school for my degree in CS I was offered a job to work, of all places, New York at an office located in the WTC. It doesn't take a genius to guess what happened next. Ever since then, I was always six to eight months behind in the graduate curve or 18 months too far ahead. Trying to manipulate my resume to match a job was like trying to stuff a 2008 CPU into a 1985 motherboard.

Then real life grabbed me by the nuts and hasn't let go.

[Ummon]

While I was going to school for my degree in CS I was offered a job to work, of all places, New York at an office located in the WTC. It doesn't take a genius to guess what happened next. Ever since then, I was always six to eight months behind in the graduate curve or 18 months too far ahead. Trying to manipulate my resume to match a job was like trying to stuff a 2008 CPU into a 1985 motherboard.

Then real life grabbed me by the nuts and hasn't let go.

All of that is life. You mean you got socially entangled.

[Singapura]

Sounds like the first job I had at the bank. We had to write a reconsiliation report for every write off. The guy that filed the reports was a very bitchy administrator who liked nothing else but to send the report back if you forgot a comma or a point. It took hours to get all the numbers right so if you get it back because of a small mistake it's no fun. So a friend and I decided to write a report for him in classical Greek and use formulas for every number in there. He wasn't amused....

[danny_galaga]

i need to contrast all this boffin talk by stating that i NEVER knew how to do ANY of that 

[lanman31337]

I'll write my next check in hexidecimal.

[SavannahLion]

While I was going to school for my degree in CS I was offered a job to work, of all places, New York at an office located in the WTC. It doesn't take a genius to guess what happened next. Ever since then, I was always six to eight months behind in the graduate curve or 18 months too far ahead. Trying to manipulate my resume to match a job was like trying to stuff a 2008 CPU into a 1985 motherboard.

Then real life grabbed me by the nuts and hasn't let go.

All of that is life. You mean you got socially entangled.

I like to think of it as being socially deficient, but yeah, that's the gist of it.

[ark_ader]

Only In America....

[Grasshopper]

I would probably fill it out in 6502 assembly.

Incidentally, has anyone here noticed that, in the original Terminator film, the view of the world as seen through the Terminator's eyes shows a scrolling list of 6502 assembler code! So the Terminator's brain appears to be powered by a 2 MHz processor!

If noticing that isn't enough to demonstrate my geek credentials then I don't know what is.

[RayB]

I would probably fill it out in 6502 assembly.

Incidentally, has anyone here noticed that, in the original Terminator film, the view of the world as seen through the Terminator's eyes shows a scrolling list of 6502 assembler code! So the Terminator's brain appears to be powered by a 2 MHz processor!

If noticing that isn't enough to demonstrate my geek credentials then I don't know what is.

Bender from Futurama reveals he has a 6502 in his head, in the Slurm episode, when he shines an xray flashlight on himself.

I'll write my next check in hexidecimal.

Any similarity to hexadecimal?

[ChadTower]

Any similarity to hexadecimal?

It's the wussbag base.  I'm doing mine in p90xadecimal.

[MonMotha]

Except that e^(j*pi) = -1.  Look up Eueler's identity/Euler's formula.
(yes, j, not i...real engineers know that i is time-domain current!)

The summation is correct.  It does work out to 1.

Therefore, this check is made out for 0.002 - 1 + 1 = 0.002.  I presume this is in reference to the "0.002 cents per kilobyte" fiasco.

Just my 0.002 cents...

Oh, and FWIW, engineering does frequently use the e^(j*stuff) thing as it is a common way to represent complex numbers in "polar" format.  The EEs use this all the time, but they'd use j, not i, so I have no idea what's up with that check.  The other engineering disciplines (that would be more apt to use i for sqrt(-1)) tend to have less use for that sort of thing.

[hypernova]

Been ten years since calculus in high school.  Aced the final exam.

College peer asked if I could look over her homework from algebra 102.  102, I thought.  What a cakewalk.  A joke.

It dealt with imaginary numbers.  Even looking at the process, nothing clicked.

Oh well.  I can still get the derivative of simple, single variable formulas or equations or whatever they're called, like 4x^4, or x^6.  The single coefficient (hey, I remember that term) and the power it's being raised is all I can do now.  (16x^3, and 6x^5 are the answers.  At least I hope so.) 

[shardian]

Oh well.  I can still get the derivative of simple, single variable formulas or equations or whatever they're called, like 4x^4, or x^6.  The single coefficient (hey, I remember that term) and the power it's being raised is all I can do now.  (16x^3, and 6x^5 are the answers.  At least I hope so.) 

Yeah, but do you remember what the deriviative means? 

[Ed_McCarron]

Two things.

One, never combine alcohol and calculus.  Never drink and derive.

Two, did you hear the one about the constipated mathematician?  He worked it out with a pencil.

[Ummon]

I would probably fill it out in 6502 assembly.

Incidentally, has anyone here noticed that, in the original Terminator film, the view of the world as seen through the Terminator's eyes shows a scrolling list of 6502 assembler code! So the Terminator's brain appears to be powered by a 2 MHz processor!

If noticing that isn't enough to demonstrate my geek credentials then I don't know what is.

I just watched this the other night and was thinking about that. Of course most people wouldn't know that. And unless they were just showing the stuff to illustrate it's internal function, I think (and have for years thought) it was silly anthropomorphism.

All of that is life. You mean you got socially entangled.

I like to think of it as being socially deficient...

No no. That's just a part of the 'wave function'.

[hypernova]

Yeah, but do you remember what the deriviative means?

Nope.

But, I know they can be used to calculate areas and volumes of parabolic shapes and such.  That is the extent of my recollection.

Two things.

One, never combine alcohol and calculus.  Never drink and derive.

Two, did you hear the one about the constipated mathematician?  He worked it out with a pencil.

You, sir, ain't right.

[Cakemeister]

Does the check say e to the 2*pi or e to the i*pi?

If it's e to the i*pi, then a mathematician wrote the check, not an engineer.

Mathematician: Why do engineers use j for sqrt(-1) instead of i?
Engineer: Duh! Because i stands for current!

[Ummon]

Does the check say e to the 2*pi or e to the i*pi?

If it's e to the i*pi, then a mathematician wrote the check, not an engineer.

Mathematician: Why do engineers use j for sqrt(-1) instead of i?
Engineer: Duh! Because i stands for current!

Ahhh. Maybe change the i to c. Isn't it funny using letters to mean numbers and stuff?

[Ed_McCarron]

You, sir, ain't right.

And I like it that way.

[Mauzy]

Does the check say e to the 2*pi or e to the i*pi?

If it's e to the i*pi, then a mathematician wrote the check, not an engineer.

Mathematician: Why do engineers use j for sqrt(-1) instead of i?
Engineer: Duh! Because i stands for current!

The check itself most definitely says i*pi. I can't even remember how to use i and I just "learned" it last year...

[vorghagen]

I thought I recognised the name on the cheque.
It's the author of a webcomic called XKCD: A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language. (www.xkcd.com)

Brilliant stuff.

[Mauzy]

I thought I recognised the name on the cheque.
It's the author of a webcomic called XKCD: A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language. (www.xkcd.com)

Brilliant stuff.

Oh my god it is. I never noticed that. My friends and I do nothing but quote XKCD during Spanish and before scholastic bowl meets...

Holy crap. There's a whole back story and like an hour and a half of audio of him arguing with a Verizon rep over the difference between .002 dollars and .002 cents.
It can be found here: http://xkcd.com/verizon/