Simplify. Leave your answer in the comments. No need to show your work. Use of calculators is not allowed.
UPDATE (6/3/05): Had a phone conference with the math teacher in question. She actually tried to explain to me on the phone that [sqrt x^10] cannot be simplified because no factors of 10 are perfect squares. How much is a years tuition at Lincoln costing these days?
7 x to the fifth
ReplyDeletegood enough for government work.
better figure out the square of 48 first red a, it aint 7... so more like 6. whatever x to the fifth...
ReplyDeleteor should i say the square root of 48. the square of 48, now that's just foil away...
ReplyDeleteWell, both of you guys understand that it will be x to the fifth, which puts you ahead of the math teacher at Lincoln.
ReplyDeletewow. i hope he is canadian
ReplyDeletebut the key here is simplify. don't you have to work like factors and all that shit? man it's been a while.... four times four times three leaves us a nice prime number under the radical, which means it should be 4 square root three x 5th.
ReplyDeletetime to go back to math class. man do i feel stupid.
I have had the pleasure of helping Alan and Tina with pre-algebra word problems. The hard part is not being able to use algebra to solve them. Algebra RULEZ.
ReplyDeleteBread, the purpose of using 7 is because the actual result will be very close to 7. Square Root of 49 and Square root of 48 are very close. And damned if I will calculate a square root without a calculator.
and I think you are right about 4(square root of 3) x to the 5th.
ReplyDeleteYes, I guess math is useless.
Bread, it's not a 'he', and she is American. And if she doesn't return my call in the next three hours, I am going to post her full name here, along with what she actually told Tim about how to answer this problem.
ReplyDeleteAnd if 4x^5 * sqrt3 is not the answer, I am going to give up tutoring this kid.
you are correct karl, the x^5 is outside the radical. and she is american? i am american and i still wrote it out wrong (though not bringing the x^5 out of the radical would get me zero points in my algebra class)... may have to reassess my own credentials...
ReplyDeleteand red a misses the point of simplify. the math teacher won't buy that shit of it's close enough to seven. but again, judging by previous comments, red a seems to be missing a lot of points recently.
ReplyDeleteBread,
ReplyDeleteThat's what I meant with my second comment - that you were right and since the answer was to simplify your method was correct.
I never had a female math teacher. Weird.
As to the fact that I have been missing a lot of points lately, I would say, "yeah." I feel dumber lately. I hope I wasn't part of some Flowers for Algernon program as a kid.
Well hell, son. You're not gonna get any smarter reading the National Review. If you have a psychological need to peruse jingoistic hate-mongering, stick with Foxnews and Instapundit.
ReplyDeleteAnd Civ 4 is coming out soon, so we'll all get our neurons tweaked in a familiar obsessive-compulsive fashion.
Wow Karl, where did you find a Democrat math teacher in Taiwan?
ReplyDeleteHonest, Guvnor, I clicked the link and denn arrived at NRO - I din' go there on porpose!
ReplyDelete