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Obviously, I’m making a joke out the situation, but staying undecided for a while really isn’t a bad way to go. I heard that 80% of people change their major atleast twice. So it’s really not that big a deal.
I changed mine twice. Not entirely, but I went from a Bachelor of Science to a Bachelor of Arts and then, a little later, I added a minor in music. I can definitely understand the whole “undecided” thing.
I started out majoring in computer science. I got most of the way through because of vicarious knowledge acquired from Nick. Then I got to discrete mathmatics 2, where they had questions like, if there are 24 bullets and 5 police offers, how many ways can the bullets be distributed amonst police offiers so that no officer gets more than 8 or less then 3 bullets. WTF??!? My business administration degree tells me, from an economic perspective, if the police department needs questions like that answered then it’s time to take up a life of crime.
That is either the dumbest, or the most incredible word problem ever. I’m still trying to figure out “Mr. Smith travels at 25 miles an hour, and Mr. Pink travels at 30 miles an hour, if they pass in 30 minutes, how far apart were they when they started?”
I’m sorry, but as an engineer I have to say “it depends on the direction of travel.”
If they’re traveling toward each other from opposite directions, you’d get a different answer than if they are traveling in the same direction from different starting points. And then if they’re traveling in perpendicular directions…
In reality, you’d draw two circles, one with a 12.5-mile radius and one with a 15-mile radius (30 mph * 0.5 hrs, 25 mph * 0.5 hrs). The two drivers could have started anywhere on the two circles, driving toward the center. So your possible answers range from “2.5 miles apart” to “27.5 miles apart.”
If I had been given this question on a test (making sure it was worded as you say) I would have written down “14 miles.” Then when the grader marked it wrong I would have blown their mind with a little trig.
One of the bonus questions on a discrete math test was, “Say you have 8 queens, how many ways can you arrange the queens on the board so that none of the queens can attack any of the other queens.” Let’s be honest, if you have 8 queens on a chess board then you probably CAN answer that question because you got 7 of your 8 pawns across the board untouched.
“Checkmate. Oh, by the way, in addition to whooping your dumb butt at chess I also left the queens arranged in such a fashion that they represent the geodesic strucutre of a cabon molecule.”
I love that this thread has spawned both math humor and now chess jokes — truly the spirit of dorkiness. “the geodesic structure of a carbon molecule”… genius, that had me laughing pretty hard.
Damon thats a pretty decently hard question.
I guess discrete mathematics is a different course to the one titled discrete mathematics in Australia which is a high school subject (and not the tough maths)
Harsh.
January 28th, 2009 at 9:47 am
Ha I’m probably gonna end up doing what he did except gon into like journalisim or something.
January 28th, 2009 at 9:57 am
Obviously, I’m making a joke out the situation, but staying undecided for a while really isn’t a bad way to go. I heard that 80% of people change their major atleast twice. So it’s really not that big a deal.
January 28th, 2009 at 10:33 am
I changed mine twice. Not entirely, but I went from a Bachelor of Science to a Bachelor of Arts and then, a little later, I added a minor in music. I can definitely understand the whole “undecided” thing.
January 28th, 2009 at 11:43 am
I changed mine too, and it was the unfortunate situation where a lot of my classes didn’t transfer to the new major… hello college loans!
January 28th, 2009 at 11:51 am
I started out majoring in computer science. I got most of the way through because of vicarious knowledge acquired from Nick. Then I got to discrete mathmatics 2, where they had questions like, if there are 24 bullets and 5 police offers, how many ways can the bullets be distributed amonst police offiers so that no officer gets more than 8 or less then 3 bullets. WTF??!? My business administration degree tells me, from an economic perspective, if the police department needs questions like that answered then it’s time to take up a life of crime.
January 28th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
That is either the dumbest, or the most incredible word problem ever. I’m still trying to figure out “Mr. Smith travels at 25 miles an hour, and Mr. Pink travels at 30 miles an hour, if they pass in 30 minutes, how far apart were they when they started?”
January 28th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
Too d@$3 far!
January 28th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
I’m sorry, but as an engineer I have to say “it depends on the direction of travel.”
If they’re traveling toward each other from opposite directions, you’d get a different answer than if they are traveling in the same direction from different starting points. And then if they’re traveling in perpendicular directions…
In reality, you’d draw two circles, one with a 12.5-mile radius and one with a 15-mile radius (30 mph * 0.5 hrs, 25 mph * 0.5 hrs). The two drivers could have started anywhere on the two circles, driving toward the center. So your possible answers range from “2.5 miles apart” to “27.5 miles apart.”
If I had been given this question on a test (making sure it was worded as you say) I would have written down “14 miles.” Then when the grader marked it wrong I would have blown their mind with a little trig.
January 28th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Consider my mind blown.
I’m start posting more word problems, this answer was awesome!
January 29th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
I’m glad you liked, Mike. Consider it some small payment for the welcome break you give me from my homework. Keep up the awesomeness!
January 29th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
Thanks so much for the kind words, I will definitely keep drawing as long as ya’ll keep reading!
January 30th, 2009 at 6:57 am
One of the bonus questions on a discrete math test was, “Say you have 8 queens, how many ways can you arrange the queens on the board so that none of the queens can attack any of the other queens.” Let’s be honest, if you have 8 queens on a chess board then you probably CAN answer that question because you got 7 of your 8 pawns across the board untouched.
“Checkmate. Oh, by the way, in addition to whooping your dumb butt at chess I also left the queens arranged in such a fashion that they represent the geodesic strucutre of a cabon molecule.”
January 30th, 2009 at 8:02 am
I love that this thread has spawned both math humor and now chess jokes — truly the spirit of dorkiness. “the geodesic structure of a carbon molecule”… genius, that had me laughing pretty hard.
August 6th, 2009 at 8:15 am
Damon thats a pretty decently hard question.
I guess discrete mathematics is a different course to the one titled discrete mathematics in Australia which is a high school subject (and not the tough maths)
Harsh.