Author: fca
Date: 04:13:52 08/19/98
Go up one level in this thread
On August 19, 1998 at 06:20:56, Peter Fendrich wrote: >I think the typical physician solution is: >The brothers will meet in 1 1/4 hour. >The dog, runing back and forth, will during that time reach 8 miles/h * 1 1/4 h >= 10 miles >The mathematician approach is in a way more 'lazy' than the physician. >I think the typical mathematician answear would be: >The brothers are reachig each other with a speed of 8 miles/h which is the same >speed as the dog is running. >The dog must run the same distance as the brothers are walking, 10 miles. Which reply I gave earlier in the thread ;-) But.... You have got it completely the wrong way around, Peter. the answer is inside the circle. :-) (1) Relative velocity is a concept far too complex for most mathematicians - it is fraught with existence-type problems, and the general relativity involved as they started off would send the math-head into rigor *tensor*; (2) Multiplication of reals without having established the closeness of the operation to that set is something a phys-head would only undertake under supervision of a math-guy - or would it not occur to him? (3) Thet the straight-line was indeed the shortest distance would not occur to the math-guy, without the problem having been better stated to begin with. I suggest an orthogonal prefix something along the lines "Consider a bijection from RXRXR to R wherein [snipped in advance of trouble]..." (4) The phys-head would frighten the math-guy away from the faster solution with talk of the dangerous of confusing vectors and scalars, some varied irrelevant Heisenberg references, a paradox or two I see a non-Dedekind cut being brought in here, so... More interesting to me is how would the **computer chess guy** solve this sort of problem? If the answer involves bean-counting, or paradigms of any flavour, or fairy chess, please follow this up somewhere else Kind regards fca PS: Else I may be frequently encountered at sci.astro.*, sci.math & sci.physics albeit in mutated exterior, but often ready to engage. I filter-plus all references to "chess" (and many other words) there.
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.