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A joke in approximating numbers raised to irrational powers

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104 points nomemory | 5 comments | 18 Nov 24 16:41 UTC | HN request time: 1.907s | source
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sevensor ◴[19 Nov 24 18:13 UTC] No.42186490[source]▶

    sin x = x
Half the problems in EE become trivial once you learn this. Sometimes the universe does a bad job of complying with the approximation though.
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1. pkoird ◴[19 Nov 24 18:46 UTC] No.42186803[source]▶
I am not sure I understand. Sin(x) approaches x only when x approaches 0. When else does the universe does a bad job with this approximation?
replies(2): >>42186824 #>>42187076 #
2. philipov ◴[19 Nov 24 18:49 UTC] No.42186824[source]▶
sin(x)=x in the same way that c=π=1 when doing cosmology.
replies(1): >>42186875 #
3. bubblyworld ◴[19 Nov 24 18:54 UTC] No.42186875[source]▶
At least you can often recover the constants after the fact with dimensional analysis in cosmology =P
replies(1): >>42186932 #
4. mr_mitm ◴[19 Nov 24 19:02 UTC] No.42186932{3}[source]▶
1=c=G=hbar and sometimes =k is not even a joke, that's just natural units. Pi=e=1 however ... is only half a joke, because cosmologists are often only interested in orders of magnitudes, and even those are sometimes approximated.
5. adgjlsfhk1 ◴[19 Nov 24 19:19 UTC] No.42187076[source]▶
the joke is that sometimes the universe is bad at making sure x always approaches 0.