Science Forums 2

[Qfwfq]

Don, the little time I could afford when I read your post was wasted on making sure I had not mis-read, re-checking the parenthesis etc. Although I had not translated it wron onto paper, the effort in scarce time brought me to a hasty conclusion and only last evening (and because a sane person such as Craig confirmed your claim so I deemed the challenge worthwile) I scrounged the time at the risk of ruining my frugal supper and including the time to re-derive the logarithm rules after my initial senile muddle; at first I had written the ratio as the log of the difference...

So, yes it's an actual identity although not obvious and rather tricky to prove, but I don't see why it has profound implications about the basic methods of formal calculation.

Now I had at least granted you the benefit of doubt and, given my lack of time, invited you to support your own claim:

Originally Posted by Qfwfq

Don I see no way for the exponent to identically equal 1 independently of x and if there's any way of the logarithms in the exponent compensating the T's in the base, go ahead and show us.

but you did quite otherwise. This is not the way to increase your audience either; an effort to get along with people and to be more compliant would do better.


Egaaaaaaaaash!!!!! I saw it after!

Originally Posted by Don Blazys

That's one reason why I am against teaching students that they should automatically "cross out" cancelled common factors.

I agree with the word automatically and I now get what you're after but it's no new cool discovery! I don't however agree where you use the word wrong. I certainly wasn't taught to do these things automatically, indeed I was often taught that it's sometimes necessary to do the opposite of "crossing out". Formal computations can be like getting from A to B in the mountains, the way to go isn't always straight down the gradient...

That's the difficult thing about learning to do exercizes and not many teachers are good at helping students to have the best approach to finding the way. My highschool math teacher was lousy in this and it caused me difficulty through the rest of my studies, but she definitely showed us how tricks are often necessary (add and subtract the same term, multiply and divide by the same term etc.). You seem to be banging on a wide open door instead of explaining your intent and helping to explore the complex inside of the palace.