Seemingly by some mathematical coincidence, a hexagon of sides 2,2,7,7, 11, and 11 can be inscribed in a circle of radius 7. The other day I saw a math problem on line, which they said came from a Polish Olympiad, where you compute the length x of the 3rd side which is the same as the radius, so that the sides of length 2,x, and 11 are inscribed on the arc of a semi-circle. The law of cosines applied twice gives the answer for x of exactly 7, but the arithmetic is so complex that the...
Just chatting with my son about Maths and he casually mentioned that 0 would be the midpoint of the number line from -inf to +inf. I wondered whether it wouldn’t be more accurate to say there is no single midpoint. Couldn’t you make an argument that any real number is exactly halfway between -inf and +inf?
A power has two parts. Base and Exponent.
A number 423 in base 10 can be written in other bases as well:
1. 4* 10^2 + 2*10^1 + 3*10^0 = 423
2. 1*7^3 + 1*7^2 + 4*7^1 + 3*7^0 = 1143
3. 7*60^1 + 3*60^0 = 73
All three expressions are equal in quantity. But I have written the multiplier of powers to form numbers in different bases. Is this what place value system is in essence ?