• That’s convention for notation

    Nope, still rules

    not a distinction between a*b and ab

    says person who only read 2 sentences out of the book, the book which proves the statement wrong 😂

    a*b and ab both being the product of a and b

    Nope, only ab is the product, and you would already know that if you had read more than 2 sentences 😂

    You have to slap 1/ in front of things and pretend that’s the subject

    “identically equal”, which you claimed it means, means it will give the same answer regardless of what’s put in front of it. You claimed it was identical, I proved it wasn’t.

    avoid these textbooks telling you

    It kills you actually, but you didn’t read any of the parts which prove you are wrong 🙄just cherry pick a couple of sentences out of a whole chapter about order of operations 🙄

    They are the same thing. They are one term

    Nope! If they were both 1 term then they would give the same answer 🙄

    1/ab=1/(axb)=1/(2x3)=1/6

    1/axb=1/2x3=3/2=1.5

    Welcome to why axb is not listed as a Term on Page 37, which if you had read all the pages up until that point, you would understand why it’s not 1 Term 🙄

    • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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      4 days ago

      ‘If a+b equals b+a, why is 1/a+b different from 1/b+a?’

      ab means a*b.

      That’s why 1/ab=1/(a*b).

      But we could just as easily say 1/ab = (1/a)*b, because that distinction is only convention.

      None of which excuses your horseshit belief that a(b)2 occasionally means (ab)2.

      • ‘If a+b equals b+a, why is 1/a+b different from 1/b+a?’

        Because they’re not identically equal 🙄 Welcome to you almost getting the point

        ab means a*b

        means, isn’t equal

        That’s why 1/ab=1/(a*b)

        Nope, it’s because ab==(axb) <== note the brackets duuuhhh!!! 😂

        But we could just as easily say 1/ab = (1/a)*b

        No you can’t! 😂

        because that distinction is only convention

        Nope! An actual rule, as found not only in Maths textbooks (see above), but in all textbooks - Physics, Engineering, Chemistry, etc. - they all obey ab==(axb)

        None of which excuses your horseshit belief that a(b)2

        says person still ignoring all these textbooks

        • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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          4 days ago

          No you can’t!

          Yes we could, because it’s a theoretical different notation. Mathematics itself does not break down, if you have to put add explicit brackets to 1/(ab).

          Mathematics does break down when you insist a(b)2 gets an a2 term, for certain values of b. It’s why you’ve had to invent exceptions to your made-up bullshit, and pretend 2(8)2 gets different answers when simplified from 2(5+3)2 versus 2(8*1)2.

          • Yes we could

            No you can’t! 😂

            it’s a theoretical different notation

            In other words against the rules of Maths that we have, got it

            does not break down, if you have to put add explicit brackets to 1/(ab)

            But it does breakdown if you treat ab as axb 🙄

            if you have to put add explicit brackets to 1/(ab)

            We explicitly don’t have to, because brackets not being needed around a single Term is another explicit rule of Maths, 🙄 being the way everything was written before we started using Brackets in Maths. We wrote things like aa/bb without brackets for many centuries. i.e. they were added on after we had already defined all these other rules centuries before

            Mathematics does break down when you insist a(b)2 gets an a2 term

            No it doesn’t. If you meant ab², then you would just write ab². If you’ve written a(b)², then you mean (axb)²

            for certain values of b

            Got nothing to do with the values of b

            It’s why you’ve had to invent exceptions to your made-up bullshit

            says person still ignoring all these textbooks

            pretend 2(8)2

            There’s no pretending, It’s there in the textbooks

            when simplified from 2(5+3)2 versus 2(8*1)2

            You know it’s called The Distributive Property of Multiplication over additon, right? And that there’s no such thing as The Distributive Property of Multiplication over Multiplication, right? You’re just rehashing your old rubbish now

            • FishFace@piefed.social
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              4 days ago

              Couldn’t resist:

              but when multiplications are denoted by juxtaposition, as in 4c ÷ 3ab

              Damn, and I thought they were called “products” not “multiplications” 🤔🤔🤔

              No it doesn’t. If you meant ab², then you would just write ab². If you’ve written a(b)², then you mean (a×b)²

              If you can find an explicit textbook example where writing a(b)² is said to be evaluated as (a×b)² then that’s another way you can prove your good faith (When I say “explicit” I don’t mean it must literally be that formula; the variables a and b could have different names, or could be constants written with numerals, and the exponent could be anything other than 1). Likewise, if you can find any explicit textbook example which specifically mentions an “exception” to the distributive law, that would demonstrate good faith.

              I’m not saying that such an explicit example is the only way to demonstrate your claim, but I’m just trying to give you more opportunities to prove that you’re not just a troll and that it’s possible to have a productive discussion. You insist you’re talking about mathematical rules that cannot be violated, so it should be no problem to find an explicit mention of them.

              If you think this insistence on demonstrating your good faith is unfair, you should remember that you are saying that the practice of calculators, mathematical tools, programming languages and mathematical software are all wrong and that you are right, and that my interpretation of your own textbooks is wrong. While it’s not impossible for many people to be wrong about something and for me to interpret something wrong, if you show no ability to admit error, or to admit that disagreement from competing authorities casts doubt on your claims, or to evince your controversial claims with explicit examples that are not subject to interpretational contortions, the likelihood is that you’re not willing to ever see truth and there’s no point arguing with such a person.

              By the way, sorry for making multiple replies on the same point.

              As my own show of good faith, I do see that one of your textbooks (Chrystal) has the convention that a number “carries with it” a + or -, which is suppressed in the case of a term-initial positive number. If you demonstrate it worth continuing the discussion, I’ll explain why I think this is a bad convention and why the formal first-order language of arithmetic doesn’t have this convention.

              • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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                4 days ago

                If you’ve written a(b)², then you mean (a×b)²

                When shown a textbook that explicitly distinguishes 6(ab)3 meaning 6(ab)(ab)(ab) and (6ab)3 meaning (6ab)(6ab)(6ab), they accidentally got it right whilst sneering and inventing their sPeCiAl cAsE:

                6a²b²=6(ab)²

                They can’t even keep their horseshit straight when their inane pivots to division are directly addressed. Every response begins “nuh uh!” and backfills whatever needs to be true for you to be wrong and them to be smarterer.

                They’re just full of shit.

                • FishFace@piefed.social
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                  4 days ago

                  I haven’t been able to follow the entirety of that conversation so I don’t remember what exactly he said about combining (implicit) multiplication, brackets and powers.

                  I think their fundamental confusion is in thinking that the distributive law is something you must do instead of a property of multiplication that you can use to aid in the manipulation of algebraic expressions but don’t have to. Folded into their inability to understand that some aspects of maths are custom and convention, whilst others are rules fundamental to the operation of the universe. Somewhere along the way he seems to think that distributivity is something to do with brackets instead of something to do with addition and multiplication - I really don’t understand how that has happened!

                  I’m pursuing a tack where I’ll see if I can get him to actually cop to any of his verifiable mistakes, or back up any of his whackadoodle claims with direct references. If he can’t, I’m out - but I do like to give people an opportunity to demonstrate they’re not trolling. The nice thing is that it doesn’t really matter whether they’re trolling or not - someone who is able to admit mistakes is someone worth trying to convince they’ve made a mistake, and someone who isn’t is not. So if you can test the waters with a simple mistake, even if it’s not central, you can establish whether there’s any point persevering.

                  Tomorrow I’m expecting another wall of text responding to every single word except the ones where I ask for such an admission, and I’ll have satisfied myself he’s a lost cause. I’ll try and watch out for his spam on future arithmetic-ragebait threads so I can help the effort to head him off though :P

                  BTW did you go on his mastodon profile? He’s had a bee in his bonnet about this, and been pushing his wrong ideas of what the distributive law are, since 2023.

            • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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              4 days ago

              So when you sneer that rules and notation are different, you don’t know what those words mean.

              Or you’re so devoid of internality that when someone says ‘imagine a different notation,’ you literally can’t.

              There’s no pretending, It’s there in the textbooks

              Show me any textbook that gets the answers you insist on. Show me one textbook where a(b+c)2 squares a.