February 4

[Zeke]

It was a new age. It was the end of history. It was the day everything changed. The day was Babylon 5 Three-Dayge, Day 3. The place was FiveMinute.net.
<ul> Sa'ar's final contribution to this event is "Grail (../b5/fiver.php?ep=grail)." Five guesses which movie he references, and the first four don't count.
Next is Derek Dean's first B5er: "Intersections in Real Time (../b5/fiver.php?ep=intersectionsinrealtime)."
And after yesterday's update, there could be no doubt that this was coming: The Top 10 Signs That Your Girlfriend is a Shadow (../top10/86.html) (by me).[/list]


This concludes our brief excursion to Epsilon 3. There's still lots of B5 to cover, though -- and Sa'ar is staff now, so you can expect it to keep coming.


Up next: Doctor Who!


(Picky clerical note: I've interchanged the colour codes of 5MB5 and 5MFY. The lighter brown is easier on the eyes and thus should go with the subsite we'll be hearing from more often.)

[Scooter]

Gajic: So tell me about this Babylon Curse of yours.
Jinxo: All the other races said we were daft to build a station here, but we built it anyway. It crashed into the planet. So we built another one... it crashed into the planet, so we built a third one. It lost pressure, broke in half and then crashed into the planet.
I always thought B5 seemed familiar -- it's Swamp Castle!

[ijdgaf]

Wow, I've *actually* seen "Intersections in Real Time".

I think.

Anyway, love the 1984 references.

[Kristina]

Kosh: (coughhiccupthroatclear) No. Really. The jellyfish that Sinclair sees is not the jellyfish you are looking for.


That's a Vorlon reply, all right.

William: Now, would you like to sit down in the silver chair?


Gotta love those nods to Narnia.

1. She knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men

I would think #1 on the Shadows list would equal #1 on the Vorlons list, but I digress.

[MmeBlueberry]

Garibaldi: Well, you could have dodged a bit more artfully.
Heh.

Gajic: So tell me about this Babylon Curse of yours.
Jinxo: All the other races said we were daft to build a station here, but we built it anyway. It crashed into the planet. So we built another one... it crashed into the planet, so we built a third one. It lost pressure, broke in half and then
crashed into the planet.
Gajic: What happened to the fourth station?
Jinxo: They took me into custody and told the guards to make sure I stayed there and didn't leave the room. However, the guards got a bit confused....
I love it!

Garibaldi: Stephen, it wasn't me! It was Bester! He reprogrammed me!
Lyta: He's telling the truth. Bester left a couple of perls at the bottom of the C of Garibaldi's mind.
Franklin: He did? Why that no-good, low-down python! I should have noticed Garibaldi was drinking all that java!
Groan.

6. She looks a little taller around noon.
And another groan.

Good stuff, all around. :)

[Derek]

Grajic: Always two there are, a master and an apprentice. We used to have more, but the numbers never added up. 2+2=5 is ungood for everyone.
Hey, waitaminute, 2+2=5 is my ... uh ... er ...

Sa'ar: Idiom, sir?

... Idiom!

Unless, of course, this is just the 2+2 = 5 day of the Three-Dayge.

If that were the case though, this should be number 5:

4. Some people look like their pets; she looks like her car

Anyway, great list, Zeke. Great fiver, Sa'ar. Congrats, Sa'ar, on B5 section headedness.

[mudshark]

<ul> Sa'ar's final contribution to this event is "Grail (../b5/fiver.php?ep=grail)." Five guesses which movie he references, and the first four don't count. All of it. http://www.trekbbs.com/threads/images/graemlins/lol.gif

Derek: You, too.

1. She knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men Lamont?

[e of pi]

Funny.

[Sa'ar Chasm]

Congrats, Sa'ar, on B5 section headedness.

Thank you, sir, and thank you all for your kind words.

Unless, of course, this is just the 2+2 = 5 day of the Three-Dayge.

Great minds, and all that. (Again!)

We also both put a Sith reference into the same scene.

Although, for the record, I wrote Grail long before you wrote yours.

All of it.

I've made enough references to that movie in other fivers that I decided to have some fun and screw with people's expectations.

I also put in a massive pile of other references...I think there's one line that contains about five by itself.

[Scooter]

Forgot to mention before --
Some people look like their pets; she looks like her car
Fantastic.

[Anonymous]

Gajic: What was all that about?
Jinxo: The Vorlon will eat your brain and swallow your soul!
Gajic: If you think you have information, you should go talk to Sinclair before you get kidnap-- (clonk)
Jinxo: Brave Sir Jinxo to the rescue! (runs away)
Brave Sir Jinxo ran away! :lol:

Gajic: Ouch...that's going to leave a stubb.
Jinxo: That was amazing...your dive was timed perfectly, and your "NOOOOOO!" was spot on.
Gajic: Hah! Take that, Sisko! GAK!
ZING!

Sinclair: Well, that was a letdown. I was hoping that Seeker guy would grant me a boon, but he kept putting me off.
Ivanova: What did he say?
Sinclair: No boon today. Maybe boon tomorrow.
Ivanova: There's always a boon tomorrow.
*Dies*

I'm greatly, greatly disapointed at the lack of reference to Bishop Brennan, however. ;)

Recording: WAR IS PEACE! FREEDOM IS SLAVERY! IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH!
Boo-yah!

aribaldi: Stephen, it wasn't me! It was Bester! He reprogrammed me!
Lyta: He's telling the truth. Bester left a couple of perls at the bottom of the C of Garibaldi's mind.
Franklin: He did? Why that no-good, low-down python! I should have noticed Garibaldi was drinking all that java!
Okay, I'm taking that "Boo-yah!" right back. :P

Most amusing, all told, though I've gotten some odd looks from the other library partons as a result of bursting out giggling so many times. Ah well.

[Anonymous]

Parton, patron, same difference.

[Chancellor Valium]

Hey, waitaminute, 2+2=5
Three, sir!

[Alexia]

2 + 2 does = 5

...for particularly large values of 2.

[Chancellor Valium]

2 + 2 does = 5

...for particularly large values of 2.

:mrgreen:

You are completely loopey, you know that? :D

I need to add that to my sig.

:mrgreen:

[Xeroc]

2 + 2 does = 5

...for particularly large values of 2.
The funny thing is, in one of my math classes a while back, someone did make a statement to the effect of:

2 + N = N

For sufficiently large values of N. ;)

[Zeke]

It's an old math joke. My favourite version is that pi equals 3 for large values of 3 and small values of pi.

[Chancellor Valium]

How about this one:

x-y=0

Therefore, 2x-2y=0
Therefore (x-y)=0, and 2(x-y)=0
Therefore (x-y)=2(x-y)
Therefore 1=2

:P

[Derek]

Along those same lines, but without the divide-by-zero, I've always liked the proof as to why 0.9(bar) equals 1.

(what I wouldn't give for a bar notation...)

let x = 0.9(bar)
Therefore 10x = 9.9(bar)
Thus 10x - x = 9.9(bar) - 0.9(bar)
Thus 9x = 9
Thus x = 1

[ijdgaf]

^ the last step is illegal. you can't divide by zero.

(and without even editing, it looks like Derek beats me to it)

[Gatac]

Derek: Clever, except that 10x is only 9 bar. Nice flubbery, though. :)

Gatac

[Zeke]

Actually, Gatac, 0.9(bar) does equal 1. Derek's proof is valid.

[ijdgaf]

There's an easier proof, if I remember correctly.

(as an English major, this will be quite sloppy. apologies.)

1/3 = 0.3(bar)
3 x 0.3(bar) = 0.9(bar)
3 x 1/3 = 1
therefore
0.9(bar) = 1

that kosher?

[Gatac]

One third is not 0.3, it's 0.333333 (and an infinite amount of 3 after that).

Does exposing those make me a bad person?

Gatac

[Zeke]

that kosher?

Yep -- in fact, it's my favourite way of making sense of the seeming paradox. Mathematically, though, the simplest proof is to observe that an infinite decimal expansion is really just shorthand for an infinite series -- in this case 0.9 + 0.09 + 0.009 + ... This has initial term 0.9 and constant ratio 0.1; when you plug them into the formula a/(1-r) for the sum of an infinite geometric series, you get 1.

A looser argument is that given any two numbers which don't have the same value, we can always find a third which is strictly between them. But there's no number bigger than 0.9999... and less than 1.0000... If there were, it would have to either start out like 0.9999... but then differ from it in some decimal place (which would make it less, not greater) or start out like 1.0000... and then differ somewhere (which would make it greater, not less). Thus they can't be different numbers, so they can only be equal.

Gatac: The notation (bar) in the posts above means infinite recurrence.

[e of pi]

He didn't say it it is .3 . He said it was .3 (bar), or
_
.3

which means .3333333333333333...

And...I shoulda posted this when I originally wrote it.

[EDIT: You also shouldn't have deformed the thread with a huge number that didn't wrap. - Z]

[Gatac]

*slams forehead*

Geesh, I totally ignored the bar.

Yes, that does make more sense now, even if I'm not particularly impressed with the findings. I'm *aware* that 9,9 (bar) is, for all intents and purposes, 10, but the proofs here feel strange. Particularly ijdgaf's, which basically gets two different numbers from the product of 3 times one third in what seems more like a rounding error to me than deep wisdom.

Gatac

[danieldoof]

we should have a thread with the best math proofs out there huh?

I like that :wink:

[Derek]

I seem to remember liking a proof I once saw for (sin x)', but I don't quite remember what it is. Calculus is getting further and further away.

I wish MathML were more ubiquitous so we could carry on these conversations with proper notations.

[Sa'ar Chasm]

Proof: women are evil.

Assumption: Time is money.
Therefore, time = money.
Women = time x money
Women = (money)^2

But money is the root of all evil: money = (evil)^1/2

Women = ((evil^1/2)^2

:. women = evil.

My ex-girlfriend showed me that one. She found it immensely entertaining.

[e of pi]

My geometry teacher showed us a list of twentyish methods of proving things. I'll see if I can find it.


Annnnnd....nope. Oh well.

Anyway, one of them, that I like, is Proof By Illegibility, where you scrawl it out so as to be unreadable. Then when the teacher asks you what it says, you claim it's whatever the right aswer is.

[evay]

My Algebra II teacher used to regale us with stories of his time in engineering school. One of his favorites was the one about the guy who got so hopelessly lost in his formulae that he proved the given.

[danieldoof]

My geometry teacher showed us a list of twentyish methods of proving things. I'll see if I can find it.


here you go proofs of DOOM (http://www.themathlab.com/geometry/funnyproofs.htm)

or this proofs of DOOM^2 (http://www.xs4all.nl/~jcdverha/scijokes/9_7.html)

[e of pi]

Thanks, ddoof. Been looking for those.

[MmeBlueberry]

Anyway, one of them, that I like, is Proof By Illegibility, where you scrawl it out so as to be unreadable. Then when the teacher asks you what it says, you claim it's whatever the right aswer is.
Depends on the teacher. If it's me, you get no credit for illegible work, whether you meant the right answer or not. ;)

Proofs: I always liked proving that n^0=1, personally.

[Derek]

^ I liked the proof I heard for 0!.

If 3! = 3*2*1 = 6, and 2! = 2*1 = 2, then 2! can also be expressed as 3!/3. Thus any n! = (n+1)!/(n+1), which is a rather redundant thing to say since really n! is just the product of all the numbers from 1 to n, right?

But what about 0!?! (Will Zeke kill me for that?) Multiplying the numbers from 1 to 0 implies the answer would either be 0, or undefined if 1 must increment. But using the other formula, we see that 0! = (0+1)!/(0+1) = 1!/1 = 1. And sure enough, 0! = 1. But I've always found that proof kind of silly.

[Xeroc]

^ I liked the proof I heard for 0!.

If 3! = 3*2*1 = 6, and 2! = 2*1 = 2, then 2! can also be expressed as 3!/3. Thus any n! = (n+1)!/(n+1), which is a rather redundant thing to say since really n! is just the product of all the numbers from 1 to n, right?

But what about 0!?! (Will Zeke kill me for that?) Multiplying the numbers from 1 to 0 implies the answer would either be 0, or undefined if 1 must increment. But using the other formula, we see that 0! = (0+1)!/(0+1) = 1!/1 = 1. And sure enough, 0! = 1. But I've always found that proof kind of silly.
There's another one I've heard like this:

Since N! = (N)(N-1)(N-2)...(3)(2)(1)
And (N-1)! = (N-1)(N-2)...(3)(2)(1)
Then N! = (N)(N-1)!
If N = 1
Then 1! = (1)(0)! = 1
So, 0! = 1

:D! = (:D)(:))!