Friday 31 May 2013

What is the value of Zero (Not mine)?

What is the value of 0/0?

(a)I first thought the answer will be 1. Because "I have been thought the number when divided by itself" will be 1.


(b)Then i thought the answer will be zero because when the numerator is zero during division, the answer will invariably be zero.

(c)I also thought that the answer will be ∞ because anything divided by zero will be equal to infinity.

What do you think will be the correct answer for the above question?

Sunday 26 May 2013

Power of 2!!


During the first year of our engineering degree, we will mostly like have very little or limited connection to our department or to our faculties. While we are entering into the second year or third semester of our engineering degree, we have been warned by our seniors about one of our professors and received several tips from them. The famous tip I received was:


"Please keep your heads down. Do not try to answer any of his questions even if you know the answer. It will lead only to disaster from there."

I am not the kind of guy who will keep his mouth shut if i know the answer. Some of them got cobwebbed by his questions in third semester. I thought my turn will take some time. Yes, it did take time. I have survived the third semester without much damage.

But in fourth semester, my day has arrived. He was teaching about a 8-bit microprocessor in our class and he asked some question. The answer for this question will be 216. But he is not satisfied with the answer 216 and he wanted the numerical value of it.

Everyone is alert to the situation and noone wants to answer this question. But he is like Ghazni Muhammad and will not fall back till he gets what he want. So he changed his question and asked "What is the value of 28" since it is a 8-bit processor. Since I am one of those 'geniuses' who will answer the question even the monstrous questions if it is of mathematical genre. I answered as "256". In that moment I realized I might be in for some trouble. But I have decided to take him down since it falls under my area of interest. 


Prof: 29

Me: 512

Prof: 210

Me: 1024

Prof: 211

Me: 2048

I can hear couple of people whispering the answer to their neighbour alongside me even though they are afraid to confront him. But it has gradually disappeared once the speed of the questions are increased by him.


He has increased the speed of the questions exponentially and my answer also reached him exponentially faster. The answers have reached him within the fraction of a second. It started to look out like we both are having a verbal battle out there. Our classmates started looking at each other like how you would normally watch the movement of tennis ball between two players in a tennis match if you are seated anywhere behind the umpires' chair or near the net.


Prof: 212

Me: 4096

Prof: 213
Me: 8192

Prof: 214

Me: 16384

Prof: 215

Me: 32768

Prof: 216

Me: 65356

To much of his delight, I have responded the most important question with the wrong answer. I said "65356" instead of the correct answer 65536. It is enough for him to do what he can do best. i.e. Teasing the student who answers the question. He has literally mocked at me for not knowing this answer. But none of them in our class laughed at me and hence he marched on and on. I believe he definitely don't know the answer for the next powers of 2 but still he carried on because he wanted to embarrass me.


Prof: 217
Me: 131072

Prof: 218
Me: 262144

Prof: 219
Me: 524288

Prof: 220
Me: 1048576

Prof: 221
Me: 2097152

Prof: 222
Me: 4194304

Prof: 223

Me: 8388608

Prof: 224

Me: 16777216

Finally I believe he ran out of the gas and moved onto the next topic. At this moment in my life, I believed that I am really special with numbers. Do you all agree with me on this?


Note: He also came for our Microprocessor lab. More on that later.


With Love,
Anand

Sequential Inputs of numbers with 8

Sequential Inputs of numbers with 8

1 x 8 + 1 = 9
12 x 8 + 2 = 98
123 x 8 + 3 = 987
1234 x 8 + 4 = 9876
12345 x 8 + 5 = 98765
123456 x 8 + 6 = 987654
1234567 * 8 + 7 = 9876543
12345678 * 8 + 8 = 98765432
123456789 * 8 + 9 = 987654321

Mathematics

What is Mathematics?

This question will arise in each and every individual's mind at least once in their life. I also had this question when I was a small child. I have asked this question to several people but they could not be able to answer this question with concrete definition like we can define any other subject. It made me to be so curious about this subject and that what made me as one of those math freaks. Since no one is not sure about the definition, I have made my own definition and here's how it goes:
"Mathematics generally has no accepted definitions. It is the abstract study of quantity, structure, space, change, and many other topics."