Re: Calculating e
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Re: Calculating e
Ray Kremer wrote:
>
> It's not useful because we already KNOW what e is to at least as many
> decimal places as you're ever going to get with that program. I said it's
> educational because you kind of get to see the process of calculating e,
> but you're right. It's not educational, either. Several different
> methods of defining e have been in math books for decades, long before
> there were calculators. School teachers don't even bother much with
> where e comes from, at least not at the high school level, they just
> concentrate on using it. So, using the calculator to approximate something
> you already know is interesting, fun perhaps, but not educational or
> useful. Happy?
No, not really. You argue that because no-one on high school level
bother to say much about it, but just use it instead, it is not
educational.
At the university they teach you how to prove that there are an infinite
number of positive integers. I knew that there were already, but now I
know why. Can I use that information? No. But I _learned_ something new
about how mathematics work.
It was educational.
--
Rene Kragh Pedersen
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Apparently my clothes are defective.
- Dilbert.
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