3180: Apples

Apples

|< < Prev #3180 (December 12, 2025)

Title text: The experimental math department's budget is under scrutiny for how much they've been spending on trains leaving Chicago at 9:00pm traveling at 45 mph.

|< < Prev Random Explanation

Explanation

This is one of 54 incomplete explanations: This page was created recently. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

7+5=12^{[citation needed]}

Transcript

This is one of 29 incomplete transcripts: Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

  Add comment        Create topic (use sparingly)       Refresh 

Discussion

As heretical as it is, I almost want to keep the explanation just like this KelOfTheStars! (talk) 00:09, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

I guess this was the explanation at the time of this comment!? --Kynde (talk) 19:43, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

I wasnt going to ruin it, when I saw it like that. But now it's been expanded, I've added in my own thoughts on the subject. Namely elemental number-theory, i.e. the possibility of counting any item just like you count any other item, plus what's going on with the title text, including a slightly kludgy call-back to the fact that (to have a budget, that must have people succesfully counting expenditures and purchased values) the Exp. Maths Dept. has clearly trained people in the use of numbers enough for them to now be awkwardly snapping at the heels of the EMD querying the justifiability of at least one of their ongoing studies. (Not sure how long my thoughts will actually last, though, in the light of further editing. But I hope at least some of what I'm getting at will be successfully distilled into any more succinct version.) 78.144.255.82 01:05, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

Twelve apples! <*thunder rolls*> Ha! Ha! Ha! BunsenH (talk) 04:36, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

Oh the irony! How did they count the twelve apples? 0,succ(0),succ(succ(0))..., I bet. This is already heavy math. (For example, what guarantees you that succ(0) exists and has exactly one value 1 and is the successor only of 0? Peano envy.) 2A02:2455:1960:4000:FD7E:5F02:5364:961 08:52, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for starting your counting at 0. I have espoused that zero IS a counting number, as you can't get to 1, unless you first arrive at 0. "Sherman, count how many unicorns there are in this field." "Um, there are zero, Mr. Peabody." SDSpivey (talk) 15:11, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

How'd you "get to" zero? You have to start somewhere and it is arbitrary. You could start at 17, define succ^-1(x) and go back to 1 or 0. Clearly this is inconvenient but not wrong. If you need zero it may make sense to start at zero but if you need negatives it may not matter. If you are teaching you might want to deal with other concepts and not "we start at zero because". There is no one true set of axioms & definition. Usefulness of Non-Euclidian geometry does not make Euclidian geometry useless.Lordpishky (talk) 17:35, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

In fact if you really want to nitpick, while most people would accept that 7+5=12 it is demonstrably false that my seven apples plus your 5 apples are equal to a pool of 12 apples. In fact it is demonstrably false that I even have 7 apples. Because no 2 apples are identical they can't be combined together. We may be willing to disregard such gross inaccuracies for the sake of, you know, being able to continue to survive for a little while longer, though. 176.138.186.7 11:10, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

As cardinal, ordinal or nominal numbers? Actually, more like "household numbers:, which includes named fractions like half, third, quarter but not 17/47, defined by tradition like the culinary definition of tomato as a vegetable. Lordpishky (talk) 17:35, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

The physicists have already shown that all apples are perfect spheres of uniform density and cannot be split into smaller apples. SDSpivey (talk) 15:11, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

Are the perfect spheres bosons or fermions?76.180.39.133 15:38, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

Not spinning? spin=0 => boson.Lordpishky (talk) 17:35, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

This comic makes me wonder if Randall is aware of us, and if he might someday try to make a comic so bizarre, we become unable to "explain" it at all. Would such a thing be possible? Something so absurd, we're forced to shrug and say "I got nothing"? It's possible I've been awake too long.69.5.140.194 18:32, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

i think there's a direct connection between this and Ultrafinitism!! 129.64.0.34 04:56, 14 December 2025 (UTC)Bumpf

"Okay, with my hrair apples added to your hrair, we have ... let's see ... hrair apples!" "Incredible! Perfect agreement with the theory!" It even works with multiple theories!

--Divad27182 (talk) 19:22, 14 December 2025 (UTC)
        Add comment