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Who Remembers the Quadratic Equation?
Given a polynomial in which ax^2 + bx + c = 0, the quadratic equation, or “negative b plus or minus the square root of b squared minus 4 times a times c all divided by 2 times a” can solve for x. This formula has been seared in my brain since the 1980s. 
But now, apparently, there is a new way to solve for x that appeared in the most recent issue of Popular Mechanics.
The images are from the Daily Mail today.
Published in General
That’s exactly right!
Although some leftist might claim, “Well, you could divide by zero if it weren’t for white, male, heterosexual Christan mathemeticians . . .
It’s true. White dudes made up that rule.
I thought all math and culture came from Islam. Was I misinformed?
I’m convinced that the quadratic equation was invented to discourage all but the most obsessive students from studying math.
No. White male, heterosexual Christian mathematicians stole it from the Arabs, who stole it from black Africans . . .
Arabs, yes. Islam, no.
Do the ancient Greeks really count as “White”?
Aside: Didja know that the first people to be described as “Whites” were the pre-Roman Britons? It’s hypothesized that it was probably a reference to the cliffs of Dover, and not a reference to skin colour.
Well, since this thread is about quadratic equations, it’s certainly true that “Algebra” is an Arabic word.
According to Wikipedia, folk were working on the problem as far back as 2000 B.C. The Babylonians, Egyptians, Chinese, and Greeks all took stabs at it, and it was an Indian mathematician who provided the first explicit solution, and a Muslim mathematician who provided the first general solution and first described the method of “completing the square”.
Lied to.
I don’t think so. One of my friends from work has Greek ancestry and he’s got reasonably dark skin. However, he may be lumped under “caucasian” like a lot of peoples who are clearly not Asian, American Indian, or Negroid (Can I say that?).
I have heard the term “Mediterranean” used before, but I don’t think it includes the South of France. It’s all somewhat confusing.
Right on, Stad, though I was committed to this particular mathematical rule before I became a Christian.
On Reddit some months back, someone posted that meme with all the identical skulls labeled “white, black, straight, gay” etc. and I made the mistake of commenting that actually, anthropologists are able to tell a caucasoid skull from a negroid one (and for pete’s sake, “negro” just means “black” in other languages). I mean that is the scientific term. Or it used to be. That day I learned that nobody uses that term anymore, that I am a racist, a Nazi, and that I should kill myself, and another commenter helpfully suggested that I educate myself to become “a better person.”
(I don’t usually like to leave a comment contradicting someone’s post, but the person who posted this was just such a sanctimonious jerk)
And that is why division by zero is undefined and has no answer.
The flaw is that you are dividing by zero in the last step.
Thanks for taking me down memory lane,
Very much agree.
Plus I am sitting here, all like: “As long as the square of the hypoteneuse of a right triangle is still equal to the sum of the square of the two adjacent sides,” nothing else really matters.
Plus the above has been put to song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQETi2IP0F4