@actuallyautistic #actuallyautistic Somehow got into an argument earlier about fractions with my parents, especially the fraction 15/16. I said that 7.5/8 is the same thing as 15/16, because they can be converted to each other by multiplying or dividing the numerator and denominator by 2.
My mom basically said, no, that's not right because it's not a "proper fraction" which doesn't make sense to me. The math checks out, and numerators can have decimal integers. Is there something I'm missing?
@chevalier26 @actuallyautistic It's the same, but it's not a 'proper' fraction in that we express fractions as most people know them in common parlance as whole number/whole number. If you talk about the ratio of one integer to another, it's also the same, but when I type in '7.5/8', what comes up via the google is 15/16. Your 7.5/8 is an expression of the ratio, 15/16 is the fractional equivalent.
@servelan @actuallyautistic 100% agree. I think the underlying problem is that I approach math in terms of patterns (though admittedly, I make careless mistakes with a lot of the simple things), so all of those decimals, ratios, and fractions are floating around in my mind as equivalent even though they basically look nothing alike. Idk how to explain it.
It's why I struggled with some areas of math throughout high school because said areas took me longer to find patterns in.
@chevalier26 @actuallyautistic Math is more rules, I think, the only part of our language that does have rules, actually...
@servelan @chevalier26 @actuallyautistic
I'm pretty sure language is math. The rules of grammar are a logical, mathematical construct.
Perhaps a computer language. But not human language.
While the "rules" of grammar are generally logical, they often aren't and are often inconsistent.
More importantly, they "rules of grammar" are not the summation of human language. We frequently ignore, break, or change the rules to facilitate communication. You can't really do that with math.
I think that math is a language, not the other way around
@ndvirons @Uair @chevalier26 @actuallyautistic Decades ago, it was discovered that six month old babies, who can't do math and don't have language to speak of, recognize that three tones equals three dots.
Noam Chomsky's 'black box' theory, that we have the capacity to learn language, includes math - 'how many' is part of language.
Try to describe this picture without using 'math words' and all you can do is say 'cookie' six times:
Unless you're English, and then you say "biscuit" 6 times, because English people use the wrong words for things.
