I managed to work out how to do distribution in RPN, something you claimed couldn’t be done, so who’s the one giving zero thought?
You don’t understand the claim. No shit RPN can perform the individual steps of working through (A+B)C. But that equation does not exist in RPN. If you insist even (A+B)C is a different equation, then obviously AC*BC*+ is a different equation. You can do the *math for distribution, using RPN, but the concept of distribution does not exist within RPN.
You can’t have rules about parentheses in a notation that does not have parentheses.
What you did is only equivalent. In the exact same way that evaluating a parenthetical gets the same result as distribution. Because that part is math, not notation. And it doesn’t matter if you do the multiplication using repeated addition, or the Russian peasant method, or floating point, or whateverthefuck. The math doesn’t change… but many competing methods are equally valid.
So what you’re really saying, as far as I can tell, is brackets themselves don’t exist in RPN.
I think, because he can’t separate notation from the concepts it expresses, he sees infix notation as the “one true notation” and so every expression in RPN that requires brackets to express in infix notation “has invisible brackets”.
In saner language, he’s trying to say that rpn allows you to specify the order of operations arbitrarily, in the same way that brackets do.
This, of course, is exactly the point, but he’s too stupid to get it.
Whilst insisting there’s a clear distinction between convention, notation, and rules, and everyone else is a moron for not juggling those concepts in such a way that he alone is correct on this accursed Earth.
… and that 2(8+0)2 ≠ 2(8*1)2. Just a whole insane crusade that brackets mean anything but ‘solve inside first.’ Sometimes. Like how coefficients cannot possibly go after brackets, except when they can. But it’s everyone else making up special exceptions.
His continued presence is a failure of moderation.
Yeah I compiled some info about the 2(8+0)² and 2(8×1)² thing. I’ll put it to him if it ever comes up again. Obviously I failed to extract myself from the discussion; I’m just having too much fun. It’s like a puzzle with this whacky - what the fuck does he actually believe? Or is he just a troll? He’s thought about it way too much to be a garden variety troll.
My guess is it’s actually something a bit more diagnosable. It’s nothing uncommon for someone to interpret many people disagreeing with them as them being persecuted, but as someone with exposure to maths he should have the ability to look at an example in a calculator manual showing how it executes left-to-right and say, “yes, that shows that, but here’s why actually it doesn’t matter.” He should be able to realise that saying “textbooks never say ‘juxtaposition’” is not the correct way, in English, to express “current textbooks never say ‘juxtaposition’”. So I think his rejection is more instinctive, and hence more pathological; he is not actually reading replies in order to understand whether they contain something true or not; he’s reading them to understand whether they agree with him or not.
I dunno what personality disorder or whatever that would fall under but… yikes. He’s like the worst example of the stereotypical teacher who can’t accept being wrong. I never had a teacher or lecturer like that; even the ones who were up themselves were able to recognise when they’d made a mistake and correct themselves. I thought the breed had died out.
BTW from your previous post, the concept of distribution does exist in RPN; you’d formulate the distributive law as:
a b + c × = a c × b c × +
(Where = expresses the equality of two expressions; it’s not being used as a binary operator)
This is just because distributivity is an aspect of the maths, not the notational nonsense he’s cooked up ;)
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This crank thinks RPN has magic brackets. And Googled an example that does not appear to be valid RPN anyway.
That brain is smooth as a baby’s bottom.
I think, because he can’t separate notation from the concepts it expresses, he sees infix notation as the “one true notation” and so every expression in RPN that requires brackets to express in infix notation “has invisible brackets”.
In saner language, he’s trying to say that rpn allows you to specify the order of operations arbitrarily, in the same way that brackets do.
This, of course, is exactly the point, but he’s too stupid to get it.
Whilst insisting there’s a clear distinction between convention, notation, and rules, and everyone else is a moron for not juggling those concepts in such a way that he alone is correct on this accursed Earth.
… and that 2(8+0)2 ≠ 2(8*1)2. Just a whole insane crusade that brackets mean anything but ‘solve inside first.’ Sometimes. Like how coefficients cannot possibly go after brackets, except when they can. But it’s everyone else making up special exceptions.
His continued presence is a failure of moderation.
Yeah I compiled some info about the 2(8+0)² and 2(8×1)² thing. I’ll put it to him if it ever comes up again. Obviously I failed to extract myself from the discussion; I’m just having too much fun. It’s like a puzzle with this whacky - what the fuck does he actually believe? Or is he just a troll? He’s thought about it way too much to be a garden variety troll.
My guess is it’s actually something a bit more diagnosable. It’s nothing uncommon for someone to interpret many people disagreeing with them as them being persecuted, but as someone with exposure to maths he should have the ability to look at an example in a calculator manual showing how it executes left-to-right and say, “yes, that shows that, but here’s why actually it doesn’t matter.” He should be able to realise that saying “textbooks never say ‘juxtaposition’” is not the correct way, in English, to express “current textbooks never say ‘juxtaposition’”. So I think his rejection is more instinctive, and hence more pathological; he is not actually reading replies in order to understand whether they contain something true or not; he’s reading them to understand whether they agree with him or not.
I dunno what personality disorder or whatever that would fall under but… yikes. He’s like the worst example of the stereotypical teacher who can’t accept being wrong. I never had a teacher or lecturer like that; even the ones who were up themselves were able to recognise when they’d made a mistake and correct themselves. I thought the breed had died out.
BTW from your previous post, the concept of distribution does exist in RPN; you’d formulate the distributive law as:
a b + c × = a c × b c × +
(Where = expresses the equality of two expressions; it’s not being used as a binary operator)
This is just because distributivity is an aspect of the maths, not the notational nonsense he’s cooked up ;)