Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Mathematics/2014 November 14

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November 14

Jimmy John's ad

There's an ad for a sandwich shop where a student is bored in math class and orders a sandwich on his cell phone. The math professor is droning on about something like this:

"...which is not to say it's a direct factorization of 1, but rather a sublimation of the factorization of 1"

(I'll try to add more of it if I hear the ad again.)

So, my Q is whether this is actually meaningful, or just random words designed to resemble a math lecture. StuRat (talk) 18:34, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Looks like nonsense.--80.109.80.31 (talk) 18:45, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

They sell subs, so sublimation is clearly a pun :-) --Mark viking (talk) 19:30, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

A factorization of 1 could be a reference to roots of unity. Sublimation doesn't have any standard meaning in math, but it does have a meaning as a verb, to "divert or modify ... into a culturally higher or socially more acceptable activity." Conceivably it go something like this: " 1=1*1 is a factorization that is dull and uninteresting. However, :$e^{2\pi i{\frac {1}{3}}}\cdot e^{2\pi i{\frac {1}{3}}}\cdot e^{2\pi i{\frac {1}{3}}}=1$. Which is not to say that this is a factorization of 1 (because factorization often means factoring into integers), but rather a sublimation (i.e. a culturally higher form) of a factorization of one." -- or it could just be nonsense :) SemanticMantis (talk) 21:57, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Here is the ad. It's nonsense, but rather amusing: "That is not to say that the transgentle factoring is a factor of 1, but rather a sublimation of the factor of one." Interestingly, what's on the whiteboard actually looks like real mathematics, but it is rather indecipherable at the Youtube resolution. Sławomir Biały (talk) 15:58, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Trisection of an Angle

In a recent search of approximations to the trisection of an angle using just a straight edge and a compass, I did not find any reference to an article I wrote some time between 1970 and 1974 titled "A Good Approximation to the Trisection of an Angle." the article was published in the Journal of Recreational Mathematics. As shown in my article, the error using my method is generally much less than .07 degrees (the largest error being .1011 degrees for an angle of 156 degrees). Since some of the articles I have seen seem to suggest they are good when they produce errors larger than my method, I thought that my article should be included in the list of references. (Unsigned comment added at 21:13, November 14, 2014‎ by anon editor 72.94.78.112 (talk))

Before we comment, could you provide a link to the published article, or exact details of where and when it was published? Are you Michael A Budin, by any chance? If so, then it was in April 1971 Volume 4 pages 153-54. Dbfirs 21:36, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Just curious, Did you pull that from an index or from the fact that it was referenced in http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED087631.pdf Naraht (talk) 16:02, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

sawtooth wave Fourier series

hello, the formula on this page: ($x_{\mathrm {reversesawtooth} }(t)=...$), x(t) assumes values between roughly -1.159305 and 1.159305. what are these numbers? Asmrulz (talk) 22:47, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

It should be $2/\pi$ times 1.851937051..., the Wilbraham–Gibbs constant. Egnau (talk) 07:14, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

thanks! Asmrulz (talk) 08:51, 15 November 2014 (UTC)