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#351 Re: Dark Discussions at Cafe Infinity » Q20 » 2007-11-17 14:55:12
fair enough.
10. Is her first name Jane?
#352 Re: Dark Discussions at Cafe Infinity » Q20 » 2007-11-17 14:36:40
uh oh. I think we need to clarify.
Jane, when you said she doesn't share your first name. Do you mean she doesn't share YOUR first name? Or she doesn't share your signature name? I'm not sure what mathsyperson meant.
#353 Re: Dark Discussions at Cafe Infinity » Q20 » 2007-11-17 13:30:30
9. Is she known best as a fiction writer?
#354 Re: Maths Is Fun - Suggestions and Comments » favorites icon? » 2007-11-17 13:25:32
So what should it look like? a couple of jumbled arithmetic symbols? Or perhaps a single symbol such as summation or integral?
#355 Re: Dark Discussions at Cafe Infinity » Q20 » 2007-11-17 06:15:49
8. is it Mary Wollstonecraft?
#356 Re: Maths Is Fun - Suggestions and Comments » favorites icon? » 2007-11-17 05:28:17
In case its not clear what I'm saying, here's a pic of my favorites bar.
#357 Re: Dark Discussions at Cafe Infinity » Q20 » 2007-11-17 05:10:06
Jane, are you kidding? you seem to be coming down rather hard on devente. I agree he made that one a bit too hard and may have answered that one question improperly, but I don't think he did it to amuse himself at the expense of others. I'm not sure if thats enough to call him "idiot", "cheat","inconsiderate fool" and "twit". again I'm not sure if you're serious but... its sure beginning to look that way.
#358 Maths Is Fun - Suggestions and Comments » favorites icon? » 2007-11-16 19:45:55
- mikau
- Replies: 25
just a small suggestion here.
many websites have a little icon that appears before their name when you put them on your favorites bar. The Math Is Fun forum doesn't seem to have one. I think it should!
I'm not sure how you do that, but.. just a suggestion! 
#359 Re: Dark Discussions at Cafe Infinity » Q20 » 2007-11-16 15:07:50
hehe, well you couldn't do it this round unless you suspect Jane is really dead. Which is absurd right?
....right?
(gulp)
#360 Re: Dark Discussions at Cafe Infinity » Q20 » 2007-11-16 12:38:47
and I vote Jane should go next.
#361 Re: Dark Discussions at Cafe Infinity » Q20 » 2007-11-16 12:31:45
(backs away) you okay, Jane?
note, your question was merely if he was LIVING in Scandinavia, which doesn't say anything about where he was from. A bit misleading, i know. But technically, correct.
#362 Re: Dark Discussions at Cafe Infinity » Q20 » 2007-11-16 11:31:52
Wahahaha! oh bother...
So who goes next? I say Devente should pick!
#363 Re: Coder's Corner » handling collisions in 2d » 2007-11-16 11:29:24
thanks for the quick response, luca. I feel a little clever for coming up with the binary search method already. (horray for me!) but the second method you describe, I'm a little fuzzy on that explanation.
Are you talking about the separating axis theorem? I just had an article that talked about dividing the collision into a set of 2d boundary values, and seeing where they overlap, (if at all) and determine a vector by which the two objects can be moved to the original contact point. Again though, i'm not quite sure what happens when you want to simulate a smooth surface, when the collision detection doesn't really work...smoothly!
#364 Re: Dark Discussions at Cafe Infinity » Q20 » 2007-11-16 11:16:46
I've never heard of him. Has anyone else?
and what was the "you have VERY good suggestions" clue supposed to tell us? That baffled me to no end!
#365 Coder's Corner » handling collisions in 2d » 2007-11-16 11:07:47
- mikau
- Replies: 3
Gah... i'm confounded.
So here's the problem. I'm trying to apply some basic physics to the collisions in a 2d game but mild inaccuracies in collision detection are causing trouble.
Say you drop a box onto an inclined plane, the box moves (say) 4 units per frame until it penetrates into the plane. Determine the exact point at which it collides and move the box there. Now determine what edges or corners of the box collided with the ground and modify the velocity, force vectors, rotation, etc.
sounds good even though those alone are no simple task.
But I have found that, for instance, if I have a plane for an object to land on, suppose a box lands on it in such a way that it should slide along the surface. Sliding has proved to be extremely horrible for the following reason. An object is walking the very edge of the collision boundaries, if in any calculation of its motion you are off by the slightest decimal value, (and in computer programs, they often are) the object can cross the boundary and it counts as a collision. Also, slight inaccuracies in the variables can cause it to slide slightly above the surface and float into the air. If there is gravity, it keeps it on the ground but then it looks jumpy and jerky as it lightly bounces across the surface.
One solution i considered was to have the collision boundaries slightly inside the visible surface of the objects. That way if the object is sliding nooooot quite parallel to the surface it won't really hurt. BUT if the surface is long enough, the error will accumulate as it slides along.
How on earth do I they handle this?
#366 Re: Dark Discussions at Cafe Infinity » Q20 » 2007-11-16 03:26:15
Because Brian May's definetly not English nor is he well known.
DEFINETLY younger than 40.
fiend! The fact is I couldn't even think of a random guess that fit the description. So I threw something that was obviously wrong to end it. We've been trying to guess this for nearly 10 days! Cease to insult me! Or PERISH!
#367 Re: Dark Discussions at Cafe Infinity » Q20 » 2007-11-15 10:48:08
i think its time to give up.
20. Is it Brian May?
#368 Re: Help Me ! » Wedge Product, kind of urgent » 2007-11-12 14:58:48
I found a pretty good article on the topic here: http://www.tulane.edu/~ftbirtel/wedge%20product.pdf
but i only understand parts of it.
Mostly because all they say is wedge product of THIS is equal to wedge product of THAT, but never actually tell me what the wedge product is. 
#369 Re: Help Me ! » Wedge Product, kind of urgent » 2007-11-12 14:09:29
does no one know how to compute the wedge product?
The wikipedia page is absolutely crazy.
supposedly it involves adjoining two vectors together, and making matrices, and something to do with determinants.
#370 Help Me ! » Wedge Product, kind of urgent » 2007-11-11 17:29:13
- mikau
- Replies: 3
my linear algebra teacher decided to discuss a topic which doesn't appear in our book and i wasn't able to get much out of his ramblings. I spent some time scanning the web for info but most places that mention it talk about stuff over my head.
I have a test on Tuesday and I KNOW he's going to have at least one problem on wedge products. Moreover he always includes problems which say "using your result form the previous problem, solve this" he says he does this so that you can catch errors in previous problems, but really it just causes your mistakes to snowball and by the time you realize you screwed up there's not enough time left to fix it.
I HATE THIS TEACHER!
anyway, he's only going to ask us to find the wedge product of a group of vectors in R^n, so it shouldn't be THAT complicated. Also there are one or two related items such as basis and dimension. I'm not sure what vector space these are for but..well i'd like to know!
I'd REALLY REALLY appreciate it if someone can break this down for me.
#371 Re: Dark Discussions at Cafe Infinity » Q20 » 2007-11-11 11:46:25
18. is he perhaps the most popular rock artist in europe at present?
#372 Re: Help Me ! » reduced echelon form » 2007-11-10 05:50:38
this takes time but you can do it. What you can do first is you can divide the top row by (a-9), the first element in the first row will therefore become (a-9)/(a-9) which is 1.
#373 Re: Dark Discussions at Cafe Infinity » Q20 » 2007-11-10 05:28:30
so he ALWAYS sings with his guitar except when he's singing with other instruments? 
This just might be the most generic rock artist known to man.
#374 Re: Dark Discussions at Cafe Infinity » Q20 » 2007-11-09 07:26:10
maybe so, but that wouldn't help me any.
#375 Re: Dark Discussions at Cafe Infinity » Q20 » 2007-11-09 04:17:12
besides, how many rock artists are there in europe under 40? there must be hundreds, and we have only 4 questions left. What do we ask now? does he have blonde hair? did he have blonde hair yesterday?