A mate in North Carolina read a piece about mathematics on my blog and responded thus:

That bull about math was disconcerting. I suddenly found myself trying to remember the quadratic equation--for determining a solution for two unknowns. Unfortunately, the thing produces two answers, one right but not always and one wrong. The wrong one is usually obvious to any dunce. And, my friends, so much for math as perfect certainty.

I think it goes something like this:

 a square plus b square plus or minus the square of 2 ab over c = ? Look it up or ask a GN for any correction needed. It has been 65 years since I flunked that test.

Do we have any Einsteins here on the forum who can help Art remember the formula?

I don't understand all this complicated math stuff but there's a bloke I know in Florida who was a math teacher. Here's a paste of what he wrote me:


The quadratic equation formula NC Art refers to does not give wrong answers, but can give an answer involving imaginary numbers. When you use the formula to solve a quadratic equation, you will get either one real number, two real numbers, or two imaginary numbers, but the imaginary numbers are still valid solutions. What is an imaginary number? Part of the formula involves taking the square root of "b squared minus 4ac" and if "b squared minus 4ac" is a negative number, then the square root of it has to be a number which, when multiplied by itself, will give you a negative number. Since a positive number multiplied by itself gives you a positive number and a negative number multiplied by itself also gives you a positive number, and zero times itself is zero, there is no number that when multiplied by itself gives a negative number. So imaginary numbers are written as a positive number times "i" where i is kn own as the square root of negative 1. In this way, equations can be solved with imaginary numbers existing in certain steps, but in the end, are gone, so you get a real number but certain steps could not be accomplished without the use of imaginary numbers.

Josh

The DunningKruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes.^[1]

Actual competence may weaken self-confidence, as competent individuals may falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University conclude, "the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others

stay excited Nomads..............hehehehee     Billeeeeeeeeeeee

Sorry Hic ups,,,,,,,,hehehe

The quadratic formula is (excuse the verbose format but the iPad cannot write equations)

X= -b plus or minus the square root of b squared minus 4ac all divided by 2a