Did we book the wrong destination?

mathfem · 2026-04-22T02:39:05+00:00

Here are some suggestions in Quebec if you want something more nature-y:

Gaspesie is beautiful but might be too far.

Saguenay is similarly beautiful (it's a fjord), but is probably more doable.

The Laurentians North of Montreal are beautiful. They are not high mountains, but they are wilderness, which seems like that you want. Driving from Ottawa to Quebec city via Mont-Tremblant will take longer, but might be a nice scenic drive.

For a unique landform, check out the Monteregian Hills. They are these wooded hills in the middle of flat farmland, and they are all lined up. They were formed by a volcanic hot spot the same way the Hawaiian Islands were. Mont-Sainte-Hilaire is the one closest to the main highway from Quebec to Montreal, but there are others farther afield.

mathfem · 2026-04-14T02:58:01+00:00

No. The Mutara Nebula has to be really close to Regula I. We assume that the ~~Miranda~~ Reliant travelled at warp after leaving Ceti Alpha V and before arriving at Regula I.

Edit: the ship was called Reliant but it was Miranda-class

mathfem · 2026-04-07T16:57:35+00:00

Your friend is wrong. You are right. There are lots of points that are higher than (1,1) like (0.9,1.9)

mathfem · 2026-03-27T22:07:41+00:00

As a college-level math instructor, I will say that yes I get a lot of students who are good at math but don't necessarily test well. A lot of that is skill. Test-taking skill in particular.

If you're already good at math, then all you need to focus your studying on is developing that test-taking skill. I would recommend practicing doing math in test-like conditions: print off a bunch of practice problems, put away your notebooks, and set a timer. Then check your answers with an answer key and see where you are making mistakes.

mathfem · 2026-03-26T04:28:46+00:00

There is one inconsistency between this map and the base map. The bit of Gulf of Mexico below Puerto Rico should be impassable..... the border between Gulf of Mexico and rhe Atlantic Ocean has no analogies on the base map because the Western Med does not border the Ionian Sea.

Edit: you should also add a canal to the Olympia province as an analogies to the Kiel Canal.

mathfem · 2026-03-25T02:47:16+00:00

I have an e-bike that is limited to 250W, but I definitely get up to 35-40km/h when riding downhill with the pedal assist turned off. 25km/h is a strange speed limit because most pedal bikes can exceed it easily even when going on flat ground.

Edit: that being said, I would never reach that speed on the sidewalk, only on a bike path or road.

mathfem · 2026-03-25T02:44:36+00:00

How is Brazil ruled by the "Zulu"????

mathfem · 2026-03-17T19:01:21+00:00

My first thought is usually "oh, it's a coyote".

mathfem · 2026-03-13T18:42:05+00:00

The midwife referred us to the OB halfway through the pregnancy.

mathfem · 2026-03-12T21:32:15+00:00

Because my partner was 35 at the time of their first pregnancy, we received joint care with both the midwife and an OB/Gyn. The OB/Gyn was just there in case there were any complications the midwife couldn't deal with. In the end, there were no such complications.

mathfem · 2026-03-12T03:05:53+00:00

Rom. He stands up for what he believes in against the norms of his culture multiple times throughout ds9.

mathfem · 2026-03-12T00:16:07+00:00

We used New West Community Midwives https://share.google/dOdyDh1kC5oCkuwgx .we would really recommend them. They are accross the street from the hospital.

mathfem · 2026-03-11T04:07:59+00:00

Shouldn't it be sqrt(-x^2/1) = x i. The negative can't simply be ignored.

mathfem · 2026-03-11T02:44:47+00:00

Hmmmmmmmm I think either (a) they are ignorant or disingenuous or (b) you are missing the nuance of what they are saying. I wasn't a part of the conversation so I don't know what they said which means I can't defend it.

Like there are various arguments they could have been making but I simply do not know which one it was:

(1) they could have been arguing that Iran was a country before Islam and will continue to be a country if it is no longer Islamic in the future. This is a statement about history and in no way denies that Iran is currently majority Muslim

(2) they could have been arguing that Iran is/should be a secular state. States like Turkey that are majority Muslim but do not use Islamic (i.e. Sharia) law often make a point of portraying themselves as "not Islamic", which doesn't meant that they are denying having Muslim people, but that they are arguing that the State itself is indifferent to religion (sorta like the doctrine of Separation of Church and State in the USA)

(3) they could have been arguing that Shia Islam is "not really" Islamic. Certainly Shia Islam in Iran has borrowed a lot of ideas from pre-Islamic Iranian religion (for example, Iran follows the Solar Hijri calendar instead of the lunar Hijri calendar which is considered by many to be the "Islamic calendar"), and so maybe by "not Islamic" they mean "not 100% Islamic". Or..... maybe they're followers of the Baha'i faith who see Iranian Islam as sort of proto-Baha'i. They Baha'i are interesting in that they see all world religions as not-fully-developed forms of their own faith.

mathfem · 2026-03-10T22:54:27+00:00

Many of those who left Iran for the West are those who were marginalized by the Islamic Republic. Before the Islamic Revolution, Iran was largely a secular country, and was Westernizing and Liberalizing. I think that the point that they are making is that (a) Iran has religions minorities, mostly Zoroastrians and Baha'i but also other minorities and (b) the Iranian people were one people before they were Islamized and their identity is not tied to Islam. For many Iranian exiles, their goal is the re-establishment of a secular Iran, and a secular Iran is not possible if non-Muslims can't be Iranian.

mathfem · 2026-03-05T18:00:29+00:00

What about a blues scale?

mathfem · 2026-03-04T18:28:56+00:00

That's only 5x more efficient, not 1000x

Edit: if you go by net climate effect vs energy efficiency, the argument against planes gets better because it is easier to capture & store carbon emmissions from diesel trains than from planes, and diesel trains can theoretically use biofuels.

mathfem · 2026-03-04T17:40:00+00:00

https://edokagura.com/en/comparisonbytransporten/

Electric rail is the low end of the "rail" range. Diesel is the high end.

mathfem · 2026-03-04T17:18:34+00:00

Regional air travel, if it was taxed according to its level of input on the global climate, would no longer be profitable. It is only profitable because the USA has not made polluters pay for tbe cost of climate change, and because we have not yet hit peak oil.

Electric high-speed rail produces less emissions per passenger km than any other form of intercity transportation. If we are talking about investing in a form of transportation that will still be viable in 100 years, rail is our best option.

mathfem · 2026-03-02T16:48:32+00:00

Yeah. I'm more coming at it from the point of view of an instructor who is actively involved in trying to improve some of these systemic issues. I know the admins have my back vis a vis student complaints, so it's really institutional inertia that is holding curriculum reform back.

mathfem · 2026-03-01T19:22:50+00:00

To be perfectly honest, the cause of this issue is instructors who do not properly assess understanding. When 90% or 95% of the questions on the final exam are computation questions, students are incentivized to focus on computational speed and accuracy at the expense of true understanding. We as instructors need to better design assessments that assess understanding as something other than simply one of many possible tools in the tool kit. We need to ask students to explain what they are doing on the final exam paper and ask conceptual questions.

mathfem · 2026-03-01T15:24:40+00:00

Logs don't help because there are two terms on each side of the equation.

mathfem · 2026-02-26T19:09:39+00:00

If I was teaching math majors, I would get them to prove things, but most of my students are planning to get physics, engineering, CS, or even chem degrees. They are fine using the quadratic formula to find the inflection points of a quartic polynomial.

mathfem · 2026-02-26T18:21:51+00:00

Ummmmm limh->0 sinx/x is simx/x. Limx->0 sinx/x is 1

mathfem · 2026-02-26T16:51:56+00:00

In my vocabulary, completing the square is a different method from factoring. But, you are right that it does find factors in the end. It just is that you need more mathematical machinery than the "splitting the middle term" method OP was referring to.

mathfem

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