I don’t understand all the dominoes in the financial crisis. In situations like this, it’s helpful to step away and look at general principles: never mind the pieces, what’s the “gravity” that makes them fall? And fall so hard?
Leverage. Leverage is debt used for investment purposes, and is extremely important. Why?
Debt, when invested, multiplies [...]
BetterExplained is about 2 years old, and what ride it’s been. The best part about having a geek diary is interacting with other learning aficionados. My “to read” list grows longer by the week (not that I mind!) and I’ve received some fantastic recommendations.
But that’s all me, me, me.
My friends at slinkset let you [...]
Accepting that numbers can do strange, new things is one of the toughest parts of math:
There’s numbers between the numbers we count with? (Yes — decimals)
There’s a number for nothing at all? (Sure — zero)
The number line is two dimensional? (You bet — imaginary numbers)
Calculus is a beautiful subject, but challenges some long-held assumptions:
Numbers [...]
It’s an obvious fact that circles should have 360 degrees. Right?
Wrong. Most of us have no idea why there’s 360 degrees in a circle. We memorize a magic number as the “size of a circle” and set ourselves up for confusion when studying advanced math or physics, with their so called “radians”.
“Radians make math [...]
Pi is mysterious. Sure, you “know” it’s about 3.14159 because you read it in some book. But what if you had no textbooks, no computers, and no calculus (egads!) — just your brain and a piece of paper. Could you find pi?
Archimedes found pi to 99.9% accuracy 2000 years ago — without decimal [...]