Basic Mathematics : the Circle

The discovery of the circle has definatly enhanced civilization as a whole. The concept of a wheel, the utilization of gears and the simplified ezplanations of the universe awould all be impossible without this shape. Unfourtunalty, amature mathematicians most easily make a fool of themselves when the forget the properties of this shape, as they are extremely prevelant in all mathematics ( from geometry to partial differential equations)

So I would advise anyone, no matter how much math they plan to finish, to commit three details of the circle to memory.

1) the Area of a Circle:

the area of a circle is pi times the radius squared. (the radius is half the diameter, and if you dont know what diameter is… well you will have to look that up yourself)

2) the Circumference of a Circle:

the Circumference (or the perimeter) is equal to the radius times the radius times 2.

3)  the Catesian expression of a circle (or the equation of a Circle)

The equation for a circle is: (x-a)^2 +(y-b)*2=r^2

where a and b are the x and y coordinates for the center and r is the radius.

 

The Greek Alphabet

One useful thing to know when studying mathematics is the Greek alphabet. Greek letters are used frequently to sybolize functions such as the sum, the convolution or often used variables. Not only will knowing the Greek symbols help you better understand mathematic equations, it will also make you sound really smart when you make comments in your math class.

Here are the Greek symbols: first the Capitalized letter, then the lower case letter, than its formal name, the letter in the English alphabet which most closly resembles the Greek letter, and finally the pronounciation.

The Best File Archiver is FREE: Introducing 7-zip

Compressing files is a useful way to save space on your hard drive. More importantly however, compressed files are a lot easier to use for download files across a network. More often than not, downloading software (especially free software) requires the user to download a .zip file, or .rar.

There are a lot of programms that can unzip these files, win-Rar is one of them, but do not use win-rar, it is always a trial version, and ALWAYS has a virus. Also win-Rar kindof sucks as a file archiver. The next big option is win-Zip. Win-zip is a great file archiver, however you have to pay for the full version, and the free trial version isnt worth the download. Also, the interface is a little bit on the crapy side.

All other file archive software either costs a lot of money, or is so bugged its not worth trying. Fortunatly for all of us, there exists a file archiver named 7-zip. 7-zip is not only the best file archiver, it is open source. Its liscensing insures that it will remain free software, and because of its popularity, the designers have eliminated most of the bugs.

You can download the programm here (http://sourceforge.net/projects/sevenzip/files/7-Zip/4.65/7z465.exe/download)

And here is 7-zip’s home page (http://www.7-zip.org/)

NOTEPAD ++, A free super sweet text editor

What is a programmer’s best friend? Note pad.

Now imagine if notepad were given super steriods. That is what NOTEPAD ++ is.  NOTEPAD++ is an open source text editor with a massive array of plug ins, and extremly flexible compatability. NOTEPAD++ runs on the slowest computers, so it is great for testing web pages, or web apps when you dont have much computing power.

You can get NOTEPAD++ absolutly FREE from SOURCEFORGE.net ( http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm ) 

 

Coherent Convolution

I started this post thinking I was going to put a movie on from Friday night’s Colbert Report. It didn’t work out the way I wanted it to, but in any case the link is: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/239584/july-23-2009/health-care-hell-scare—die-agnosis–mur-dr
TD and I started this blog to kind of vent on the frustration we’ve been feeling about the super-conservatisim that we’ve noticed on campus, and we’ll probably branch out too. So, a little bit about ourselves. We’re currently students at Brigham Young University in Provo, UT. Almost needless to say, we’re LDS, but I don’t think we exactly fit the stereotype. I’d like to think that we try to think outside the box on a few things. We hope let our voices be heard and hopefully this blog goes somewhere.

So back to the topic at hand. I’m tired of this association that Obama has had since election time with socialism. It blows my mind that there are people who really think that he’s going to change this country into some kind of Neo-Marxist government. That’s not going to happen people. He’s not a socialist. He’s liberal. He simply feels that government can and should take an interest in helping people that cannot help themselves. It seems to me that there are a lot of people who are struggling with this idea of healthcare, and our conservative media friends: Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reiley, and yes, even Glenn Beck, don’t seem to grasp this situation as it really is. They seem to be feeding you all of these horror stories about the hellhole that is Canadian healthcare. They would have you believe that there are people dying in the streets becase there is no way for them to see a doctor because evil government won’t let them in. I recently went to Canada, and I didn’t notice a single person in the streets bleeding out of his eyes or vomiting uncontrollably, or suffering because of the destructive Canadian healthcare. This needs to be a social program. What is the difference from dying from a heart attack and dying from your house burning down? I really cannot see any difference.

Anywho, I think TD is working on a couple of things for us to look at, and I’m excited to see what he has in store.

Debate on Religion

Sean Hannity and Christopher Hitchens have a fierce debat on the general validity of religion. While this may not be the most educational lecture, you are bound to be entertained.

Health Care Reform Video

Why do we need health care reform?

Here is a nice video to underscore the healthcare issue.