Today I encountered an interesting brainteaser in the form of a proof that somehow shows that 2 is equal to 1. If this proof were logical and true, I would be the Queen of England, but unfortunately it is not true and is instead fatally flawed. I don't really know how to lay out the premises and all that stuff in the proper mathematical way, so I'll just give you the proof right here with nothing added (it flows from top down... try to figure out where the proof falls apart):
- a = b
- a^2 = ab
- a^2 - b^2 = ab - b^2
- (a - b)(a + b) = b(a - b)
- a + b = b
- Subbing in a = b, b + b = b
- 2b = b
- Subbing in any non-zero value , 2 = 1 (or 4 = 2, or 8 = 4, etc.)
See if you can find the flaw in this proof without cheating (NO GOOGLE!). This took me about 10 minutes to figure out... First person to get the right answer gets a prize! Just leave you answer as a comment.
kamster
p.s I am really loving Sara Bareilles right now. Her song "Love Song" has got me hooked. She has a sound sort of like Chantal Kreviazuk... maybe a tiny bit less scratchy but that's the closest I can compare it to.
p.p.s Sorry the formatting is messed up... I wanted the equal signs to line up. It works here when I'm writing this but it doesn't appear properly when I post. And I'm too lazy to create a gif.
7 comments:
I love sarah bareilles too!
i'll send you some more sarah songs if you want.
i have a few.
Ah... I'm ok. I have all the songs I need
what's the prize
The prize is free link to a URL of your choice, for a full week!!! On a sidenote, i havent written about your video yet... I will today. Also I didn't realize that you need an openid account to comment here.. So I changed commenting to allow anonymous visitors. Anyways jon, keep thinking aboout that proof. Im certain you will be able to figure it out if you try hard enough :p
the error is in the lines four and five.
this is because the division of (a-b) equals zero, because a=b. Since division by zero is undefined, the argument is wrong.
yay i win.
so easy.
WOOHOOOOOOO JON SOLVED THE PROOF! You didn't cheat did you? Cus if you did that would be too bad. You should start a blog man, although I'm not really sure what you would write about. Want a link?
Post a Comment