- Location
- On the sofa. (Probably)
Just read a mathematical joke that I didn't get but the punchline was about the approximately equals sign and how if you see a mathematician use it you know he has almost given up on finding a proper proof. For some reason as soon as I read the joke I couldn't stop thinking of Taylor... I wonder why.
For those that didn't know of the approximately equals sign (≈), it is something to use when you have almost but not quite gotten the right answer but the effort to get closer becomes prohibitively more difficult. You don't use it to say 2≈3 but maybe that x≈10^6 instead of having to find out after a year of computation that the answer is 1 000 023.
It's an approximation and no your teachers will not give you a pass on your math tests if you guess the answer and preface it with this sign. More likely is you'll get a verbal spanking.
For those that didn't know of the approximately equals sign (≈), it is something to use when you have almost but not quite gotten the right answer but the effort to get closer becomes prohibitively more difficult. You don't use it to say 2≈3 but maybe that x≈10^6 instead of having to find out after a year of computation that the answer is 1 000 023.
It's an approximation and no your teachers will not give you a pass on your math tests if you guess the answer and preface it with this sign. More likely is you'll get a verbal spanking.