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Bad Math Thread

Horton

Cat
Administrator
I might be a noob compared to like @Vorpal @Rufus Shinra or even @Wakko

But I saw this Quora post and couldn't resist sharing, as it made me giggle IRL.

A few years ago an email was sent to the whole math department at my university. The sender was an amateur mathematician who was furious that two papers he wrote were rejected by one famous Math Journal. Both papers were attached to the mail.

The first dealt with a fundamental problem in set theory, which urged him into a fundamental revision of set theory. The second paper applied the new mathematics to (a.o.) relativity theory. The fundamental mistake discovered in set theory was this.

"Suppose an element x is not in set X. Then x is zero times in X. However, x * 0 = 0, hence 0 must be in X. Hence the notion of membership needs revision."

I'm not joking, nor am I making this up. I never arrived at reading his second, major, paper.

Rofl :ROFLMAO:
 
I am already the Monarch of Stupid, partially from my bad math skills.
 
😰

I don't get it.

Well, the guy made a "proof" that the whole of set theory needs to be revised, and that proof really doesn't make much sense.
By the way, set theory is currently the core foundation of all of mathematics, and it really had it's fair share of paradoxes and redefenitions. Smarter people have "attacked" it.

The guy claims:
"Let something called x not belong to a set (group of things selected according to some rule) named X." Fine so far.
"But x*0=0" Wait a second, since when have you specified that you can even multiply that undefined something you called x ? A set of all fruits doesn't contain a chair, but you can't just multiply a chair by 0 - chairs can't be multiplied, you can maybe move them areound and sit on them. Plenty of mathematical objects can't be just "multiplied by 0", at least without any context.
"hence 0 must be in set X" Wait, what?? How??? That's a literal non-sequitur. Multiplying an object by 0 doesn't say anything about if the result of it will fit into any sets the original have been fitting in. This line makes absolutely no sense.
 
😰

I don't get it.
The joke is that he's confused "x is zero times in X" with "x times zero is in X" because the two sentences sound similar. "x is zero times in X" means that the element x is in set X zero number of times, aka, it's not in set X. "x times zero is in X" means that the element x multiplied by zero is in the set X. These are two completely different concepts but he equates them because he doesn't understand that the word "times" has a different meaning in each context.

He's basically tried to disprove basic set theory using a pun.

Well, the guy made a "proof" that the whole of set theory needs to be revised, and that proof really doesn't make much sense.
By the way, set theory is currently the core foundation of all of mathematics, and it really had it's fair share of paradoxes and redefenitions. Smarter people have "attacked" it.

The guy claims:
"Let something called x not belong to a set (group of things selected according to some rule) named X." Fine so far.
"But x*0=0" Wait a second, since when have you specified that you can even multiply that undefined something you called x ? A set of all fruits doesn't contain a chair, but you can't just multiply a chair by 0 - chairs can't be multiplied, you can maybe move them areound and sit on them. Plenty of mathematical objects can't be just "multiplied by 0", at least without any context.
"hence 0 must be in set X" Wait, what?? How??? That's a literal non-sequitur. Multiplying an object by 0 doesn't say anything about if the result of it will fit into any sets the original have been fitting in. This line makes absolutely no sense.
See above. It's not a non-sequiter, there is a logic behind it, just a stupid one.
 
The joke is that he's confused "x is zero times in X" with "x times zero is in X" because the two sentences sound similar. "x is zero times in X" means that the element x is in set X zero number of times, aka, it's not in set X. "x times zero is in X" means that the element x multiplied by zero is in the set X. These are two completely different concepts but he equates them because he doesn't understand that the word "times" has a different meaning in each context.

He's basically tried to disprove basic set theory using a pun.


See above. It's not a non-sequiter, there is a logic behind it, just a stupid one.
Ahahahahhahahahahhahahahhahahahahhahahahahahahhaahahahhahahahahhahahahahahhahahahhhahahahhahahahahahahhahaahahhhhahahhaaahahhahwhahhwhahahhaahahhahahahahahahahahha
If this is true, this is just INCREDIBLE !
Oh my fucking god.
I hope it's not actually that. I mean, seriously? Wow. I guess that's what they call "not even wrong".
 
Well, the guy made a "proof" that the whole of set theory needs to be revised, and that proof really doesn't make much sense.
By the way, set theory is currently the core foundation of all of mathematics, and it really had it's fair share of paradoxes and redefenitions. Smarter people have "attacked" it.

I've always struggled with set theory . . . I didn't find out until years later that the math curriculum my parents homeschooled me with was specifically built against set theory. To quote the publisher: "Unlike the "modern math" theorists, who believe that mathematics is a creation of man and thus arbitrary and relative, A Beka Book teaches that the laws of mathematics are a creation of God and thus absolute….A Beka Book provides attractive, legible, and workable traditional mathematics texts that are not burdened with modern theories such as set theory."
 
I've always struggled with set theory . . . I didn't find out until years later that the math curriculum my parents homeschooled me with was specifically built against set theory. To quote the publisher: "Unlike the "modern math" theorists, who believe that mathematics is a creation of man and thus arbitrary and relative, A Beka Book teaches that the laws of mathematics are a creation of God and thus absolute….A Beka Book provides attractive, legible, and workable traditional mathematics texts that are not burdened with modern theories such as set theory."
Oh wut

Tell me more...
 
Oh wut

Tell me more...

A Beka seems to have offlined their former page with the full open letter rant about "Biblical math", although an abbreviated version (including all of the material quoted above) is still on their shorter subject description page. Basically, however, A Beka holds that the "Biblical" way to teach math is strictly by rote. It is critical, A Beka posits, that young children internalize that the correct answers are achieved by following procedure without understanding or questioning, while older children may learn the principles but must be taught that the principles are derived from absolute, objective reality and are not the product of human thinking.
 
On the topic of Bible and math... I should remind the people here that, in the Bible, you can find this paragraph:

And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.
1 Kings 7:23

The round molten sea with diameter 10 units and circumfrence 30 units.

nice
 
On the topic of Bible and math... I should remind the people here that, in the Bible, you can find this paragraph:

And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.
1 Kings 7:23

The round molten sea with diameter 10 units and circumfrence 30 units.

nice

Well, you can either assume they were rounding off, or that the Biblical version of pi is 3. I remember an Onion article to the latter effect, but wouldn't be surprised if SOMEONE unironically argued it for real.
 
Well, you can either assume they were rounding off, or that the Biblical version of pi is 3. I remember an Onion article to the latter effect, but wouldn't be surprised if SOMEONE unironically argued it for real.
Could be, but it's a semi-famous kind of canard that gets passed around in several versions. For example, back in 1998, there was this April Fools joke passed around:
Snopes said:
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — NASA engineers and mathematicians in this high-tech city are stunned and infuriated after the Alabama state legistature narrowly passed a law yesterday redefining pi, a mathematical constant used in the aerospace industry. The bill to change the value of pi to exactly three was introduced without fanfare by Leonard Lee Lawson (R, Crossville), and rapidly gained support after a letter-writing campaign by members of the Solomon Society, a traditional values group. Governor Guy Hunt says he will sign it into law on Wednesday.
...
"I think that it is the mathematicians that are being irrational, and it is time for them to admit it," said Lawson. "The Bible very clearly says in I Kings 7:23 that the alter font of Solomon's Temple was ten cubits across and thirty cubits in diameter, and that it was round in compass."

Lawson called into question the usefulness of any number that cannot be calculated exactly, and suggested that never knowing the exact answer could harm students' self-esteem. "We need to return to some absolutes in our society," he said, "the Bible does not say that the font was thirty-something cubits. Plain reading says thirty cubits. Period."
Closest thing that actually happened in reality seems to be the Indiana Pi Bill, although it wasn't based on I Kings.
 
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