h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Okay, I only got halfway through this entry, because I could feel my head starting to explode.

So you can understand why I had to stop.

Otherwise, great article!


The Traveller
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Can't the guide provide a nice way to arrange mathematical equations? They just look ugly in this form. Good article, though.

Ah - proof by contradiction. The memories that brings back!! Great article, and I agree that it's a shame mathematical notation can't look better in the guide.

It's not very tidy, is it? Who needs to get talked to to get that fixed?

I remember that two years ago I accidentially read an entry in a mathematical handbook about a measure how irrational(!) a number was. Curiously enough neither pi nor e made the race -- the most irrational number is the golden section (don't have its value here).

It's not a fancy from a master thesis, it's serious old lore of approximation theory...

As far as the problems with formulas are concerned: Do you think it's worth writing guidelines for mathematical (or technical) typesetting in h2g2? I can't bring MathML to the Guide (others could) but at least we can give our formulas a more readable (and uniform) shape.

Hi, thanks for your comments

I asked about mathematical notation. The towers say that should complicated notation be needed, we should use laTeX 2 to format it. It can then be converted to gifs quickly by the editors.

Indeed Ow! Having never advanced to maths 'A 'level even, I do not expect to be able to understand this. Having said that; I DO!!!!!! Stunning. It's as clearly put as you could probably manage, I should think. Not that, in the end, it means anything to me in a practical everyday sense, but it helps show how strange our universe is.

I only understand it conceptually. If someone told me to apply it in a useful manner, I'd probably distract them and then run in the opposite direction. That's always been my problem with math. My response is usually along the lines of "That's interesting. What's it good for?" followed by the teacher either glaring at me or looking very confused. Ah well. Good entry.

Hi Arnia. How've you been?

I've been good thanks

Looking forward to Saturday

BTW, Maths isn't FOR anything. It just is.

um, what? math isnt for anything? id like to see you fly in an airplane that someone designed without using calculus - good luck with that.....

That's right. We don't have any short-term plans to incorporate mathematical XML into GuideML, but we can always put really nasty equations into GIFS and display them that way.

This one, though, is a really simple proof, and it works fine as it is, IMHO.

The proof is certainly understandable, I'd just like to see it looking nicer. Never mind, though.

Bethinabirch, you're taliking about applied maths, which isn't *real* maths.

Always a tricky thing, making maths legible on the Web. There is no perfect solution that's easy to use...

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What's the point of having something that can't achieve anything other than being itself? Or, to put a slightly less philosophical turn on it, if it isn't FOR anything, why is it?

But Maths can be used for almost everything. However, the best and most widely used maths is developed entirely for its own sake. It is honed and refined by the decades and then very suddenly bursts into the sciences and arts.

Consider topology. It was first seriously developed by Poincare in the late 19th century to develop an answer to the question about the stability of the solar system. It needed a lot of work to build results, tools, methods and experts. By the end of the 90s, topology has become linked to almost all of maths from number theory to complex analysis.

Don't question what it is FOR. It is for nothing and yet can be used in everything.

So what you're saying is that eventually it finds a for, but not necessarily any time near its creation. Or am I missing the point completely?

It always has a FOR. It is for its own sake. It is others who can move the methods around and use them for anything. They are completely application independent so what is useful in particle physics may also be useful in sound engineering.

I see. Or at least I begin to understand.

What was supposed to happen Saturday?