superposition | [MoM] IC Contact

i was trying to reach someone decidedly funnier but it gave me you instead
what sort of math humor do you have

[well excuuuuuuse me princess.]

Why did the computer scientist always mix up Halloween and Christmas?

because he holed himself up in a basement for months on end

[............................ it wouldn't sting so much if it weren't true :'|]

No, because Oct 31 = Dec 25.

At least play along, you're the one who was asking for jokes in the first place.

i was playing along
that was me playing along!!

but im not sure im quite getting it
substituting letters for numbers didnt work
dividing 10/31 and 12/25 gave very different quotients
ill admit that maths isnt exactly my specialty

Ah. It's a play on the difference between octal and decimal numerals - octal is base-8, and decimal of course is base-10. Thus, (3*8)+1 = (2*10)+5.

The quotients thing was a decent try, though.

Edited 2015-10-05 04:22 (UTC)

i tried addition first but then division struck me as the more obvious route
but what is even the point of using a different base when decimals are already a global standard
that just sounds needlessly complicated
i wouldnt even have imagined that to be a thing

Hence why it's a computer scientist. Octal's mainly used as a shorthand for three-digit binary numbers, e.g. 7432 = 111 100 011 010. Hexadecimal (base-16) is a little more elegant, though, since a word length divisible by 4 is more common in modern machines.

okay you just used plenty of words that im sure have legitimate meanings
but ill be damned if i know what any of them are

Well, as the saying goes - There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't.

[God he is SO pleased with himself on that segue.]