I don't have mod points, but just wanted to say thanks for posting a serious comment. Every comment above is just a cheap joke.

I would be proud to do jury duty, but I have IBS and I'm pretty sure that this might disqualify me (were I ever contacted). When might I be asked about this type of information? How long are juries in the seats between breaks? What is the system for taking breaks? Is it at the whim of the judge? Do jurors have to request them? Before a trial starts, are you given information about how long it might last?

I have to admit that the negativity in the comments is surprising to me. I totally agree, the spell binding was genius. When I started playing, I was surprised at the lack of Mana meter. "What? So I can just keep casting spells over and over? This is going to be stupid easy." Not so! The spell-casting limitation was shifted from some arbitrary in-game number to the skill of the person actually playing. Casting spells finally feels like you're doing something. I hope more games pick up on this idea.

Also, I played it through with my friend without issue and had an awesome time. Well worth the price of a Guinness.

hehehe. I guess we'll have to call that one a typo, eh? ;)

But, even if you meant 136/206 = 0.66019475, you've still fallen into the same trap as they did: you've rounded. You're abusing the equal sign. To be exact, we should say:

136/206 = 0.6601941747572815533980582524271844 (repeating) [pedantic or on-topic? I can't tell...]

And although we might call it "simple mathematics" that 1/3 = 0.3333... this leads to the true, but perhaps counter-intuitive result that 1=0.9999....

The average person will say that the first result is "truly equal" while the second result is "about equal". When pressed, they will backpedal and say that I guess 1/3 is "about equal" to 0.3333.... [ yes, I often bring this up in bars to hear friends' thoughts]. I guess, I'd have to put this out there to you all. How do we prove that 1/3=0.333...? We can show that the series 3/10 + 3/100 + 3/1000 + .... converges to 1/3, but I'd no longer call that "simple" [i.e. must define "limit", prove convergence, etc.]. Any thoughts on a better way to convince friends of the "exactness" of this equality?

Mrwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Also use CHDK, also consider it good stuff. And I love the fact that my powershot takes AA batteries and has a standard USB connector. They've gotten more money out of me because of this, not in spite of it.

Personally, I've never understood the resistance to paying teachers more. Our entire push in the last decade has to make schools more business-like. Normally, the measure of a good business is whether it stays in business. With schools, however, that metric doesn't work. No Child Left Untested is an attempt to fix this. If we have a metric for schools, then we can "bankrupt" those that aren't performing. We are trying to fit our schools into our free-market philosophy. However, for some reason, we ignore an elementary free-market observation; if you don't have enough qualified candidates for positions, then you need to improve working conditions and/or offer more money. Simple, and yet rather than recognize this, people complain about "administration" and call teachers whiners.

Since we can't outsource education, we've decided to put the squeeze on artificially. Give schools less money, while at the same time, expect more. The schools I worked at could use *more* "administration". Our principal was overworked. Our secretary was deciding which classes students should be placed in, because our *part-time* counselor was only on campus half the day. Rooms only got cleaned every third day. Roofs leaked. Heating failed. Our school had no librarian. There was no music program. There was no dance program. There was one visual arts teacher. After-school programs died as their funding was cut. What an inspiring place for a student to be. Really expresses the concern society has for their education.

And you've got curriculums that are created are created by textbook makers and suits far removed from the realities of students. You can't teach something to someone who doesn't care. But "inspiration" is secondary. Spend a week studying imaginary numbers that culminates in students who actually understand what they're looking at when they see the Mandelbrot Set, and, officially, you've wasted a week, cause that isn't on the tests. Spend a week working through some of the details and mathematics of how, exactly, your voice is transmitted from your cell phone to mine (something students are always *very* interested in), and, officially, you've now wasted two weeks. And the tests will show that you're behind. You must be a bad teacher.

I often think that our society's vision for teachers is to remove all individuality, all wiggle-room, all deviations from the norm. In our attempts to make sure that curriculum is presented exactly equally to all students in all schools, we will soon remove teachers all together and replace them with DVD's.

No, no, no! THIS one goes here! THAT one goes there!

So incredibly true. Compare the two versions of "The Office." In the UK, they told their story, had some laughs, but when it ran its course, they stopped. I wanted more. I still want more. I'll just have to wait a few years then watch the episodes again. In the US, however, the program is floundering to find weekly topics. And it shows. Once Jim and Pam hooked up, the main tension, the binding thread was gone. Look at "Heroes". Intriguing first season, great climactic moment. But it just...keeps...going. Look at "Lost". I followed the first season closely, but after a while, you start to think that the writers are sitting around going, "Now what can we do this week, without really changing much. After all, we still have 10 more hours of programming to fill." Does anybody even watch The Simpson's anymore?

I shoved my head back up my ass when I found out that the Freedom Fries people were serious.

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

I'm not sure if I'm on board with you here. That's quite a claim to make. Just because it's hard to imagine math that's not identical to our own, does not mean it does not exist. I can imagine a quantum sized life-form living in a probabilistic world, never coming up with the integers. Or maybe a universe-sized creature who has absolutely no need for the idea of oneness.

Since I'm posting, here's what I think is a fun problem:
2178*4 = 8712
21978*4 = 87912
219978*4 = 879912

There's one other family of numbers (i.e. a four digit number, expanded in a similar pattern) that does this, if we throw out palindromes and numbers with leading zeros. What is it and can you show that these are the only two such families?

Mod parent trawl.

Other solutions that solve poster's problem without answering his quesiton:

1. Memorize as you go.
2. Screw lecture, just watch Square One.
3. Have friend audio-record lectures then have other friend convert them to notes then photocopy friend's notes and use OCR.
4. Drop out of school.
5. Prove the Reimann Hypothesis and skip right to that PhD.
6. Hire a plant to continually ask inane questions during lecture, giving you more time to input those equations in LaTeX.
7. Code up a Math Module for Dragon Naturally speaking.
8. ???
9. Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all

Wait... What were we talking about?