Survey posted 2005-05-16 19:04 by Jon.

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Survey idea by me.

Duh! This one's too easy. :-D Good idea, though.

As a side note, I'm surprised people voted for 0!, 1!, and 1. They're all the same thing and therefore cannot be a possible answer. Eliminating those and the "Huh?" option gives you a 1/3 chance of getting it right.

And another reason why nobody should miss this is because the problem is directly answered on Google. Type e^(pi*i)+1 in if you don't believe me (or click the link). :)

that would be cheating. can't you just type it into your calculator as well?

That depends on the capacity of your calculator. A TI-82 couldn't do it, for instance.

Good call. That's what I did before answering. Kind of a useless waste of time, though.

same here but i didnt realize that the 0!wasnt the same as the as the 0 untill it was too late

i like it

The answer is 0.

This equation is often called the "Famous Five" equation, as it uses 5 of the most famous numbers: e, Pi, i, 1 and 0.

Just for the record, 1!=0!=1

Thanks for spoiling the fun! :(

I was this close to answering "0!", luckily I saw the exclamation point just in time. But indeed, neither "0!", "1!" nor "1" can be the correct answer, because then there wouldn't be a unique correct answer.
By the way, there are so many answers with a zero or one in it, chances are it's one of those. (When answering a multiple choice question and you can pick from "cat", "dog", "fish" and "pinguin" you already know it's not "pinguin", it's just to far away from the other answers.) So anybody who knows what the exclamation point means and makes an educated guess will end up with the correct answer. (This paragraph did not make any sense whatsoever, did it. :( )

Sure, it makes perfect sense. You said that if two or more answers are the same, then the correct answer is not any of them.

I don't know how to summarise the rest of the paragraph, but it more or less makes sense.

Plus, there is no such thing as a "pinguin" (penguins, however do exist :-D)

Oops, that's the dutch way to spell it. :S My bad, sorry.

My English teacher showed me some test from some other teacher or standards body (I do not remember the details), & on one question it had 2 duplicate answers & an answer which was completely blank (which happened to be the correct one), & I have taken tests on which there were 2 choices that were both correct (& thankfully, accepted as such).

What about the question:
"Name an animal that starts with the letter 'p'.
a) cat
b) dog
c) fish
d) pinguin"
????

made perfect since penguin has nothing to do with the other animals so its most likely not the answer

No kidding.

How could that happen? 0*0=0, but 1*1=1? Could I get an explanation?

well here we go
1! is one 1 so 1
which equals 1 1=1
and well 0! some math people got together and said 0! is 1 and now it is.
ta da thats magnificent

Whenever you do a factorial you include "1" but not "0".
If you included "0" then x!=0 would be true for all x. Mathematitions decided to do the same thing with 0! Start with "1" and don't multiply it by anything. Guess what? You're product is "1"

either way u put it nothing will always turn into something since everything is constantly changing

ti83plus(à) = i ?
Else var(i) = undefined

It's Euler's identity, right? It has been called the most remarkable formula in mathematics.

Yes. There is a lot on Google about it, incl. this great article from Wikipedia (check link).

Yeah, I'm doing a project on pi right now and I came across it. It's pretty amazing.