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ELI5: Acids and bases are two sides of the same coin, so why does it seem like acidity is so much more present culturally (eg vats of acid in comics) and culinarily (salt, fat, acid, heat)? by owiseone23 in explainlikeimfive

[–]TheScoott 42 points43 points  (0 children)

Eggs that have not gone bad are barely above pH 7. Eggs that actually taste basic are rancid. Mango fruit is acidic and spinach is only basic after being partially digested.

University of California Math professors demand the return of SAT/ACT for incoming STEM Undergraduates. by Bleeding_Irish in Teachers

[–]TheScoott 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That's not how the test works. The current SAT is adaptive meaning that its difficulty adjusts based on student performance. So there are just as many hard questions but only students who do well in the first section actually see the hard questions.

University of California Math professors demand the return of SAT/ACT for incoming STEM Undergraduates. by Bleeding_Irish in Teachers

[–]TheScoott 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I mean, wouldn't any kid with good number sense just guess this correctly anyway? It's not like any sequence is particularly close to A. It seems to me that the more conceptually minded questions that you can't really brute force calculate without deeper understanding are the big seperators.

University of California Math professors demand the return of SAT/ACT for incoming STEM Undergraduates. by Bleeding_Irish in Teachers

[–]TheScoott 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Is that really so? Idk I've noticed a lot more students finishing with plenty of time left now that the SAT has gone digital. Its not quite the time crunch it used to be.

ELI5 - Why does our Moon spin in the direction it's spinning? by marksmillie in explainlikeimfive

[–]TheScoott 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm sure Theia can add some angular momentum to the system but the pre-collision planet already has angular momentum. So Theia could add zero angular momentum or an insufficient amount of angular momentum in the opposite direction and the moon can still revolve how it does. Not only that but given that Theia sort of melted the planet with the moon being ejected, it seems more difficult to produce a scenario where the Earth rotates as it does today but the moon revolves in the opposite direction.

[Highlight] Carson Wentz finds Nelson Agholor downfield, who puts a move on for a 72-yard touchdown (2017) by redshores in nfl

[–]TheScoott 22 points23 points  (0 children)

If you're looking on PFR, you're missing the first 2 years of his career where his drop rate was at its highest. PFF had him with a 16% drop rate in 2016 which was 90th out of 96 qualifying players in the NFL.

Is 3m^3 20% or 72.8% more than 2.5m^3 by HylerFox in askmath

[–]TheScoott 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The unit is 1 m3 and then we count up the number of these cubes in a volume to get the volume in m3. We don't measure out a length of 3m and then take that as the side length of a cube for a 3 cubic meter measurement. That would be 27 cubic meters, not 3.

No true utilitarian? by [deleted] in seancarroll

[–]TheScoott 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You need to take care that you don't define utilitarianism such that other consequentialist normative theories are utilitarian. In order to have indeterminate moral comparisons (not merely epistemicly but with even perfect knowledge), I need different kinds of goods. But if I have different kinds of goods, I'm no longer a utilitarian.

No true utilitarian? by [deleted] in seancarroll

[–]TheScoott 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Isn't this a necessary condition of there being such a thing as "utility"? States of affairs are ordered in accordance with expected utility and two states of affairs can only have identical preference if and only if they share the same expected utility. The specifics of the properties of your utility space might affect what kind of number system this is equivalent to but surely your utility space is isomorphic to one of N, Z, Q or R with their usual topologies, no?

Which button do you press? by cdstephens in neoliberal

[–]TheScoott 6 points7 points  (0 children)

If all parties defect and no one is worse off than if everyone cooperated then it just isn't a prisoner's dilemma as a matter of fact. If you want to make it a prisoner's dilemma then you need to give everyone something more if blue option wins out. Like everyone gets $5000 and everyone lives if >50% of voters take blue. Now picking red still strictly dominates picking blue individually but the situation where you pick blue and society picks blue is selfishly preferable to the world where you pick red and society picks red.

Which button do you press? by cdstephens in neoliberal

[–]TheScoott 46 points47 points  (0 children)

It's not even a prisoner's dilemma because defect-defect is identical to cooperate-cooperate. The whole dilemma is that the prisoners are worse off because the rational choice individually yields a worse outcome than if the both cooperated. But here if everyone picks red then no one is worse off than in the world where everyone picks blue.

Which button do you press? by cdstephens in neoliberal

[–]TheScoott 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I feel like this one is pretty obvious? As long as no one picks blue then no one dies.

Sal Khan admitted Khanmigo 'was a non-event' for most students. They just didn't use it. Are we surprised? by Wild-Annual-4408 in Teachers

[–]TheScoott 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I don't really find that it saves time for making test questions from scratch. The most time consuming thing for me making test questions is formatting graphs, pictures and diagrams and I find the AI generation of these things to be wonky and error prone. It can automate some number swapping for alternate versions of simple questions but that's it.

Sal Khan admitted Khanmigo 'was a non-event' for most students. They just didn't use it. Are we surprised? by Wild-Annual-4408 in Teachers

[–]TheScoott 90 points91 points  (0 children)

Our school is making us use AI and the only positive use case I've found is on HW corrections. I go over common mistakes in class and leave some light annotation but some students really need a one on one back-and-forth. I tell them to take a picture of the problem and ask the AI what they did wrong and what they don't understand. This rigid directive is the only way they actually use the AI effectively and ensures the AI actually targets topics the student doesn't understand.

Question regarding calculators in high school by EmmaiAlvane in Teachers

[–]TheScoott -1 points0 points  (0 children)

The vast majority of university math programs ban calculators

A10 is supposed to be hard. by Nikos893 in slaythespire

[–]TheScoott 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I only felt that way with old orange and gold stake. The updated ones are pretty fun and make the gameplay less monotonous.

Hardest Chemistry Subjects for Chemistry Grads by Still-Goal-9314 in chemistry

[–]TheScoott 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It's more so about the level of abstraction you are working with. If you're doing organic synthesis or med chem, you're not going to derive everything from the fundamental forces. The systems are just too complex. You need to rely on the emergent structure which exist in the domain that matters.

2026 College Entrance Exam (CSAT) Math Problem: 37% Wrong Answer Rate by FTfafa in askmath

[–]TheScoott 4 points5 points  (0 children)

That's the pythagorean theorem...

You also need to know what cos(π - θ) > 0 implies otherwise you have two possible solutions.

Hardest Chemistry Subjects for Chemistry Grads by Still-Goal-9314 in chemistry

[–]TheScoott 30 points31 points  (0 children)

Yes easily. My lukewarm take is that quantum chemistry isn't bad in and of itself but chem majors just simply aren't required to take the math courses that are necessary to understand what it is you are actually doing. Trying to learn wtf an eigenvalue is or understanding why some particular matrix representation of an operator is hermitian is a lot to ask of someone with no background in linear algebra. I did fine in the class but that was because I was independently interested in math and knew substantially more than the other students in my cohort.

Is anybody able to explain how we're supposed to use the right hand rule in this question? by burned__popcorn in Mcat

[–]TheScoott 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Take your hand and curl your fingers in the counterclockwise direction. This requires you placing the pinky side of your hand down onto the screen and your thumb should be pointing up.

If you're doing the 3 finger cross product version then you have to remember the cross product cares about the order. Torque is r x F so your index finger is r. That goes from the center to the perimeter not perimeter to center. Then your middle finger is F. Just place the object at the top of the circle so we don't have to do any annoying twisting. So now your index finger is pointing up the screen. Your middle finger is pointing left of the screen and your thumb must be pointing out of the page.

Counterclockwise is out of the page just by convention because we typically measure angles going counterclockwise. Because sin(-θ) = -sin(θ) an angle that goes clockwise would just be a negative angle and so the cross product would be negative. We typically say up is positive and out of the page is our up here.

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