Friday, October 30, 2009

Nerdy Halloween

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This is Euler's Identity. Here's why it's a big deal:
Three basic arithmetic operations occur exactly once each: addition, multiplication, and exponentiation. The identity also links five fundamental mathematical constants:

* The number 0.
* The number 1.
* The number π, which is ubiquitous in trigonometry, geometry of Euclidean space, and mathematical analysis (π ≈ 3.14159).
* The number e, the base of natural logarithms, which also occurs widely in mathematical analysis (e ≈ 2.71828).
* The number i, imaginary unit of the complex numbers, which contain the roots of all nonconstant polynomials and lead to deeper insight into many operators, such as integration.


I had actually already carved my pumpkin pi purely for the pun's sake. Then I figured why not go for geek gold. I left out the "+ 1 = 0" part, but true nerds will recognize this immediately.

1 comments:

Bob Crowe said...

Wow, you da math guy in the family. I would get pi but if I walked down your street I'd wonder what you were trying to say about eye-pie. I love an intellectual slant on cheesy commercial holidays.