THe Joy of Discovery
I feel like a little kid.Part of my math class is learning to use a graphing calculator. The book gives "how to" with two specific calculators, but I have a different one. When going through the examples in the book, three examples were giving me problems and not coming out right. This has been troubling me a couple of days now. Last night I was going through yet another example when the calculator told me "error; illegal implied multiply". Huh. What does that mean? After doing the same thing and getting the same answer at least 10 times, I began to see the light. "Illegal implied multiply"... was I implying to the calculator to multiply when it wanted to be sure that's what I wanted it to do by telling it specifically? I tried it. Eureeka!!! It worked! (Duh, math and specifics go together!) I checked the other examples I'd had problems with and specifically telling it to multiply caused those to come out right too! Yeahhhh!!! I feel like a little kid - all excited.
Thinking about it, sometimes when I imply things to people it causes trouble. If I don't say specifically what I mean, I may be misunderstood and the other person(s) respond in ways I don't expect. Sometimes I'm guilty of using implication to imply something that isn't true without actually lying, usually out of insecurity, guilt, or pride (like in the comments of my last post - I hope you all will forgive me). I think maybe less implication and more specifics will keep me honest and out of trouble. :)
posted by Colleen @ 6:06 AM
2 Comments:
Wow - I love your thoughts on being specific about our thoughts/intentions. I need to work on that quite a bit myself. Sometimes, I'm probably not specific enough, especially when it matters most.
One more reason not to like math, but maybe I'm just impatient and need to take a life lesson.
I would have run from the room like a crazed lunatic, and frantically searched for the loaded pistol!
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