Greatest Equations Ever

sgant writes "What is your favorite equation? This was the question asked by Physics World in a recent poll. This is also covered in a New York Times article about the same poll. Some of the equations mentioned were the simplistic 1+1=2 and Euler's equation, eⁱ + 1 = 0. What are some of your favorite equations?"

Take a guess....

[oneandoneis2]

Some of the equations mentioned were the simplistic 1+1=2 and Euler's equation, e^in + 1 = 0. What are some of your favorite equations?"

Take a look at the username, and take a guess at mine :o)

Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm quite fond of this one...

B*u*pi * integral of e^x

Hint: Try writing it in mathematical notation.

that's an easy one.. the answer is

[peculiarmethod]

First we state that women require time and money:
Women = Time X Money

And as we all know "time is money"

Time = Money

Therefore by substituting Money for Time we get:

Women = Money X Money

Women = (Money)2

And because "money is the root of all evil" we therefore can state:

Money = (Evil)1/2

And Since

(Money)2 = Women

Then (Money)2 = Evil

And we are forced to conclude by substituting "women" for "(money)2" from above that:

Women = Evil

ThinkGeek t-shirt

[bokmann]

My favorite is the thinkgeek tshirt that says "2+2=5 for extremely large values of 2".

It is not just funny... if you consider the numbers not as integers, but as any float value with that integer as the first number, it is true.

0 = 0

[RAMMS+EIN]

My favorite is 0 = 0, because it's the one that most often indicates you're done with the math exercise. :-)

Re:Impressions of math equitations.

[Paster Of Muppets]

No, 1 + 1 = 10...

Waiting for everyone to switch their calculators to binary mode...

F=ma

[Colin Smith]

Gotta love motorcycles. Mmmwwhahahaaaa.

Quotation from non-mathematical world

[Anonymous Coward]

Beauty * Brains = Constant

Re:Impressions of math equitations.

[DarkDust]

1 + 1 = 11

There are 10 types of people: those who understand binary arithmetics and those who dont :-)

Everything = 42

[marcovje]

Everything = 42 :-)

an old favourite

[Anonymous Coward]

b4i (square root)u ru/16

OBLIGATORY:

[marktaw.com]

Life, The Universe & Everything = 42

Re:Take a guess....

[Ford Prefect]

Take a look at the username, and take a guess at mine :o)

But shurely 1 /\ 1 = 1 ? [wikipedia.org]

One my calc teacher showed me

[lewger]

I always liked this one that my calc teacher says he saw once on a students paper
Sin x / n = 6
The logic of this was that the n on the bottom cancelled out the n on the top so the result was Six. Oh well I laughed when I was shown it.

Re:correction

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad my mathematical abilities don't reach beyond spelling rude words on calculators held upside-down.

Oh well. 5318008.

Re:Impressions of math equitations.

[Associate]

There are 11 types of people:
Those who understand binary
Those that don't
And those that think they do.

y = r^3/3... har-de-har-har!

[Anonymous Coward]

From the Simpsons episode, "Bart the Genius"...

Teacher at gifted school:
So y = r^3/3 and if you determine the rate of change in this curve correctly, I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

[The Class laughs. Bart looks confused.]

Teacher:
Don't you get it, Bart?
Derivative dy = 3r^2 dr/3, or r^2 dr, or r dr r. Har-de-har-har!
Get it?

Re:Well...

[metlin]

Slashdot - the only place where you could stay ontopic and mention buttsex and integral in the same sentence _and_ get modded informative.

Yay!

Re:OBLIGATORY:

[SamSim]

6x9=42

Google calculator

[Knx]

If you don't have a math tool handy, you can use the Google calculator to check some of the equations mentioned here. For instance:

sqr(-1) [google.com]
e^(i.pi)+1 [google.com]
1+1 [google.com]

That is, if you're suspicious...

The only math equasion I ever liked...

[Anonymous Coward]

x / 0 = math sucks

Re:that's an easy one.. the answer is

[commodoresloat]

I'll settle for my favorite syllogism:

All men are mortal
Socrates is a man
Therefore, all men are Socrates.

Energy stored...

[tagishsimon]

I'd have E=0.5mv^2 rebated into every car steering wheel in the land. And maybe a nice E display on the dashboard.

1+1=10

[notany]

There are 10 kinds of people: those who understand binary and those who don't.

Re:Fermat's Last Theorem

[Alranor]

I once found a remarkable proof of this fact, and wanted to share it with the world, but there was not enough space in the signatures on Slashdot to write it.

Re:correction

[Anonymous Coward]

Euler has a ridiculous amount of stuff named after him.

A hockey team in Edmonton, Alberta...

The Slashdot Equation

[jolyonr]

Of special importance to slashdot:

garbage in = garbage out
Jolyon

binary

[fender_rock]

Maybe its me, but many people seem to like the number 4. Perhaps its because lots of people are always showing others that they can count to 4 on their fingers in binary.

Re:correction

[AuMatar]

Ever wonder why they named 2.71... e? One guess.

Re:correction

[cocotoni]

As they say, in maths things are usually named after Euler, or the first person to discover them after Euler.

Re:correction

[Anonymous Coward]

e for exponential?

Girls = Root of evil

[Val314]

Thats easy:

Girls = Time x Money

Furthermore, we take the statement, "Time is money", and we get:

Time = Money

Girls = Money x Money

Girls = Money^2

Moreover, the statement, "Money is the root of all evil" means that:

Evil = the square root of money

Girls = (Evil)^1/2 (Evil)^1/2

which reduces to...

Girls = Evil

Re:0 = 0

[_xeno_]

Conversely, my "favorite" is 1 = 0, because it means that you get to spend another 5 minutes figuring out what you did wrong.

Re:Everything = 42

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouln't that be:
Everything = 42 - Life - Universe? =)

Gotta be a winner:

[tod_miller]

us {all,your,base}

Of course if sets aren't your thing...

Re:Actually...

[dwbassett42]

This difference in views is similar to a fundamental difference between engineers and physicists: Engineers feel their equations are a reasonable approximation of reality, and physicists feel that reality is a reasonable approximation of their equations. And mathematicians? They see no relation between the two. ;)

trial and error.

[nounderscores]

That's only true for horse shoes, hand grenades and 1950s chemotherapy.

In the words of a professional logician "Bull...."

[N Monkey]

"All men are mortal
Socrates is a man
Therefore, all men are Socrates."

"The last scene was interesting from the point of view of a professional logician because it contained a number of logical fallacies -- that is, invalid propositional constructions and syllogistic forms -- of the type so often committed by my wife."... :-)

Monty Python [cmu.edu]

Re:correction

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer Exp[j*theta] = cos[theta] + j*sin[theta], but then again, not everyone can be as cool as electronic engineers....

Re:Actually...

[jpnews]

Mathematical formulas indicate an understanding of such laws, so without that understanding, your cell phone wouldn't work.

Without lamps, there'd be no light.

Joke Time

[TrentL]

George Bush still doesn't know if Bin Laden is alive! After numerous rounds of "We don't even know if Osama is still alive", Osama himself decided to send George Bush a message in his own handwriting to let him know that he was still in the game.
Bush opened the letter and it appeared to contain a coded message:

370HSSV-0773H

Bush was baffled, so he typed it out and e-mailed it to Colin Powell. Colin and his aides had no clue either so they sent it to the CIA. No one could solve it, so it went to the NSA and then to MIT and NASA and the Secret Service.

Eventually they asked Britain's M I6 for help. They cabled the White House: "Tell the President he is looking at the message upside down."

Re:Actually...

[Smidge204]

Nonono, any researcher will tell you that. They just want to cover up the TRUTH. Those complex mathematical formulas are actually mystical runes that describe ancient spells. The formulas themselves DO make your phone work!

=Smidge=

Re:1+1=10

[juhaz]

How about this instead:

There are 10 kinds of people in the world:
Those who understand quaternary, those who don't, those that think it's binary or ternary, and then there's are the ones who insist on making stupid jokes about numeric systems.

Re:sum of cubes

[krumms]

I say, that until I saw the sum of cubes I internally denied the existance of negative numbers.

Okay I know this is slashdot and there's been some pretty nerdy posts before, but jesus

Re:1+1=10

[216pi]

and what are the other eight?

Re:sum of cubes

[Kippesoep]

I wish I could deny the existence of negative numbers. My bank, on the other hand, insists that is how much money I have...

Women = Evil

[static0verdrive]

Here's my favorite:

First we state that women require time and money:
Women = Time x Money

And as we all know "time is money"
Time = Money

Therefore by substituting Money for Time we get:
Women = Money x Money
Women = (Money)^2

And because "money is the root of all evil" we therefore can state:
Money = (Evil)^1/2
And Since
(Money)^2 = Women
Then (Money)^2 = Evil

And we are forced to conclude by substituting "women" for "(money)^2" from above that:
Women = Evil

Can't argue with mathematical proof!

I'm partial to

[jzarling]

1 Bourbon + 1 Shot + 1 Beer = :)

Re:correction

[Anonymous Coward]

MOD THIS FUNNY

i was falling off my chair.

Re:correction

[UnknowingFool]

Too bad my mathematical abilities don't reach beyond spelling rude words on calculators held upside-down.

Oh well. 5318008.

Wouldn't it more appropriate to be: 55378008

Re:(Generalized) Stokes equation

[Just Some Guy]

That's very similar to Farfegnugen's Law of Inverse Transients relating the comb structure of the polymassive decay groupings to the unthorped resident pressures:

S_{pD0^(42e)}pi=23^ln(volume)

Oh, crap, why don't you admit that we both just made this stuff up to sound intelligent on Slashdot?

Re:Take a guess....

[Speare]

But shurely 1 /\ 1 = 1 ?

No, I'm serious. And stop spelling it 'shurely.'

Re:correction

[Venner]

Yep. There was a (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) footnote in one of my college math books that the tradition in mathematics was
"...to name [things] after the second person who discovered them. Because Euler probably got there first."

Re:Actually...

[freqres]

I think I need a new reel of tape in my head then. The one I have now seems to only deal with beer and boobies.

Re:Actually...

[psbrogna]

For example, MS Windows.

Re:Actually...

[Vintermann]

It's what I always said, maths is in fact magic.

It would be cool with a game like final fantasy where spells were named after mathemathical concepts.

Quick! Do a Laplace transformation and invoke the Jacobi symbol!

Re:correction

[kimota]

Along similar lines, my favorite equation is best expressed as a question and answer:

Q: What's the square root of 69?
A: 8 something.

Heh.

--Kimota!

Re:V=IR

[Quantum Jim]

There was once a football player who was teetering on the edge of academic eligibility. To help the poor guy with his physics test, the coach told him:

Remember this ryme, to get the power in a circuit:
Twinkle twinkle little star,
Power equals I squared R.

Well the school day before the exam, the football player also had a big game. He tackled alot of people and had a really good day. However, the next day he failed his test! The coach couldn't understand, so he asked the player if he remembered the ryme. The football player said:

Of course, coach:
Twinkle twinkle star in the sky,
Power equals R squared I!

There's a moral in there somewhere. :-)

Re:correction

[Anonymous Coward]

Euler's formula is what his mum fed him ...

Re:correction

[squidfood]

Actually, it's not named after Euler, just by him.

Actually, it wasn't named by Euler, but by another man of the same name.

Re:Take a guess....

[PenguiN42]

Try 1+0=0 - this should be a bit harder :-)

You're right, that would be a hard proof ;)

P=VI

[philfr]

If vi is power, what about emacs ?

You're all wrong

[multipartmixed]

> Euler's Formula is breast milk??

No, it's

99 + 20 + 9 + 6 + 15 + 31 + 21 + 23 + 22 + 26 + 17 + 19 + 4 + 14 + 24 + 33 + 11 + 28 + 18 + 5 + 10 + 32 = 1 * (Stanley Cup)

You're welcome.

Re:As a martial artist...

[PingPongBoy]

I see the unstoppable and the immovable - now what do I need to do to chop a brick?

The Management Equation

[FrankieBoy]

A mathematical proof which explains why managers and others in authority make so much money.

From your physics course, you will recall that:

Power = Work / Time

From the world of business, we know that:

Knowledge = Power

and also that:

Time = Money,

Substituting these identities into the original equation, we get:

Knowledge = Work / Money

Solving for money, we get:

Money = Work / Knowledge

Thus, Money approaches infinity as Knowledge approaches zero, regardless of the Work done.

What this means is: The Less you Know, the More you Make.

Taking this analysis and proof one step further, we know that:

Knowledge = Education x Time

Solving for Time:

Time = Knowledge / Education

and then substituting for Time back into the Power equation, we get:

Power = (Work x Education) / Knowledge

From which we can see that the closer Knowledge gets to 0, the more power one will have.

Note:You can also increase Power through increasing either Work or Education, but it should be noted that this approach doesn't have the same type of leverage as lack of knowledge.

This equation is also known as the MANAGEMENT equation, since it provides a clear and concise mathematical explanation of why managers, executives, politicians and most other highly unknowledgable individuals get paid so much.

Also explains why us highly knowledgable techies get paid nothing.

Re:The Slashdot Equation

[iggymanz]

That's one of the four equations of the Slashdot Unified System.

The Existence of the Inevitable Dupe:
yesterday's story == tomorrow's story

Resonance of the Herd Mentality:
as opinion(user) approaches opinion(mob), karma of user increases

The Jakov Smirnov Obverse Transform:
For any operation U on X which yields Y, in Soviet Russia, operation Y yields X on U!