mixed numbers are not even recognized by students or the general public in many european countries. adam atkinson has collected data worldwide on this question. not sure if he's a funster On Thursday, December 10, 2015, Bill Gosper <billgosper@gmail.com> wrote:
A young friend has to convert all his "improper" fractions to mixed numbers. When he repeated my remark that mathematicians, scientists, and engineers shun mixed numbers, he got hauled up before the dean, who angrily insisted that mathematicians actually prefer mixed numbers. Does anybody know a computer algebra system that even offers mixed numbers as an output format? An input format?? --rwg A still younger friend emailed:
What?? 3½=3+½?? That's crazy!
I was showing this guy rotation matrices, and he seriously asked, "What's a degree? Is that like pi/180?" --rwg _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com <javascript:;> https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
-- Thane Plambeck tplambeck@gmail.com http://counterwave.com/