decoration decoration
Stories

GROKLAW
When you want to know more...
decoration
For layout only
Home
Archives
Site Map
Search
About Groklaw
Awards
Legal Research
Timelines
ApplevSamsung
ApplevSamsung p.2
ArchiveExplorer
Autozone
Bilski
Cases
Cast: Lawyers
Comes v. MS
Contracts/Documents
Courts
DRM
Gordon v MS
GPL
Grokdoc
HTML How To
IPI v RH
IV v. Google
Legal Docs
Lodsys
MS Litigations
MSvB&N
News Picks
Novell v. MS
Novell-MS Deal
ODF/OOXML
OOXML Appeals
OraclevGoogle
Patents
ProjectMonterey
Psystar
Quote Database
Red Hat v SCO
Salus Book
SCEA v Hotz
SCO Appeals
SCO Bankruptcy
SCO Financials
SCO Overview
SCO v IBM
SCO v Novell
SCO:Soup2Nuts
SCOsource
Sean Daly
Software Patents
Switch to Linux
Transcripts
Unix Books

Gear

Groklaw Gear

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.


You won't find me on Facebook


Donate

Donate Paypal


No Legal Advice

The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

Here's Groklaw's comments policy.


What's New

STORIES
No new stories

COMMENTS last 48 hrs
No new comments


Sponsors

Hosting:
hosted by ibiblio

On servers donated to ibiblio by AMD.

Webmaster
Both answers are correct, but only one of the formulas is | 115 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Both answers are correct, but only one of the formulas is
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 01 2013 @ 03:30 PM EST

But both formulas are not correct for what one wants to do. Only one can be correct depending on the purpose you are applying the math. This means that one of your answers are wrong within any given useage.

If you think both can be correct within the exact same usage, I challange you to present a single situation in real world use where both answers are correct.

Additional math definitions are always required. For example:

    2+5*5
is the same as:
    2+(5*5)
but not the same as:
    (2+5)*5
(2+5)*5 is the correct formula for:
    You wish to sell one container with 2 oranges and a second container with 5 oranges at a price of 5 cents per orange.
2+5 = 7 oranges * 5 = 35 cents.

But if you use the other formula, you end up with 5*5 = 25 cents + 2 = 27 cents.

While your customer would love you selling 35 cents of oranges for 27 cents, it wouldn't be so good for your business.

Yes:

    Both answers are correct for each of 2 different formulas
but:
    only one formula is correct for a given application thereby making one of the answers wrong for that application.
I believe there was a Mars lander that crashed because someone used the wrong math and ended up using an answer that was wrong for the application.

RAS

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Groklaw © Copyright 2003-2013 Pamela Jones.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
Comments are owned by the individual posters.

PJ's articles are licensed under a Creative Commons License. ( Details )