Thursday, September 16, 2010

1 + 1 = 2 Whatz the assumption

I was thinking of it while speaking to some of my friends and here is a realization I had!

me: I ask them what is 1 + 2 ?
response: '3' came the response (with a vague stare indicating - do you think you are smart?)

me: My next question went what is your assumption?
response: Assumption? its plane maths! its arithmetic... (with the stare indicating that they were surprised with this)

me: Nope I just wondering if you realized the depth of what you just told!
response: ah!!! (with all expression of kind of frustration!, looking at each other.)

I then proceeded to ask them what is 2a + b; and the answer came (2a+b).

me: Then what is 2a + b + a
response: 3a + b

me: Yup! So what is your assumption!
response: they are like variables!

True! but the question here is essentially, do we really understand what like variables mean? They are variables true but - they are modeling something in the real world. What is that?

The variables essentially stand for class of objects; what I mean is here
Let me ask:- How much is 2 dogs + a cat (equivalent to 2a+b!)?
2 dogs + a cat (that is the answer, its nothing like 3 cats or 3 dogs)

This realization is so fundamental, I hope we realize the depth of every thing that we learn!

14 comments:

Parisarapremi said...

shaale li ee level alli paaTha maaDDbeku kaNree.. college ge hOgO hoth ge clear aagirtaare aaga..

Vinod Kumar said...

Bring the Objective thinking to action...and we hope there will be a difference in how we deal with situations. Thanks Sachi

Unknown said...

Very good example to emphasize the need for objective way of thinking...

Naveen said...

Cool...it reminds me of the interaction that we had with parents of S.S.L.C students @ Byalakere.... the farmers could appreciate this approach !!! but, unfortunately students are not thinking in these lines.... Hope, this approach to thinking becomes common from now on :-)

Naveen said...

Cool... this reminds of the discussion we had with the parents of S.S.L.C students @Byalakere... where you talked about the same concepts w.r.t Mangoes, etc.... The farmers could appreciate this. Unfortunately, the students didn't. Hope, this approach to thinking becomes common from now on :-)

MyPersonalFinance said...

Thats cool and it reminds of the famous saying.....Be curious always! For knowledge will not acquire you: you must acquire it.
Definitely if a person is curious to learn, objective outlook will pertain.

Sachidananda Benegal said...

Thank you all for your encouraging comments... will get back with more insights as I get them

shrfuti said...

Very interesting!

Anonymous said...

Thank you for realizing importance of learning things.. whatever it is

Sudheer said...

you still haven't answered the fundamental assumption behind 1+2 = 3 :)

Sachidananda Benegal said...

Hey Sudheer! its pretty clear.. the underlying assumption is that they are "like" ie. they belong to the same class :)

Rohit Agarwal said...

hey sachi... just read this post. good one. couldn't help leaving a link to a similar post on my blog some time back:

http://rohitnrun.blogspot.com/2009/09/zero-or-hero.html

let me know what you think about it :D

take care

Sumana said...

very true n interesting. This type of thinking really helps to get forward in clearer way...

Anonymous said...

logically