I am writing a series of books, entitled, EduFables, or educational fables, to educate elementary schoolers in math and science topics, not usually covered until high school or college.
My belief–similar to yours, I think–is that a gut feeling for topics such as calculus can be given to children from kindergarten, up.
My approach has been to bury the concepts into fairy tales (and eventually apps) so that the kids don’t even realize they are learning.
I’m always looking for new ideas, so I thank you for providing some out of the box fodder for me to think about. Your posts must be helpful to a great many people. Thanks a lot!
I am a mechanical engineer and for most applications we only need pi to 3 decimal places (3.142) for most machined parts and 4 digits (3.1415) for aerospace or medical applications. Tightening your tolerances costs money therefore we always use the loosest possible tolerances we can get away with which still allow our parts to function within a given system.
Hi Kiro! Great question. In those cases, the “e”'is referring to numbers in scientific notation, but not the constant e that refers to growth (confusing!).
1e3 = 1 x 10^3 = 1000 (I.e, 1 with 3 zeros)
So 1e27 is 1 with 27 zeros, pretty big!
1e-3 = 1 x 10^-3 = .001 (1 / 1000). So 1e-11 is super tiny.
Often scientific notation uses a capital E but I should clarify in the post. Thanks!
Kalid,
I have become a devotee of your work. You are one the the great 'splainers! And you are fun to read–I rarely have a smile and good laugh (quietly, as I’m at the library) when I’m studying math/calculus–in fact, often, I’m rather full of anxiety! But I enjoy reading your work. And you are thorough, even prolific, so there’s more to look forward too!
You are performing a great service: explaining difficult, complex ideas in humanly consumable form. Thank you! Thank you!
[…] and on it goes. We resist because of our artificial need for precision. But audio and video engineers know they don’t need a perfect reproduction, just quality good […]