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That doesn't really make sense. How did they explain what plotting was without defining a line? I guess they could have taught how to plot a line segment then e
by boomboomsubban 3y ago
That doesn't really make sense. How did they explain what plotting was without defining a line? I guess they could have taught how to plot a line segment then explained they go on forever.
- gizajob 3y agoIn this context, a line is what you draw with a ruler to get the correct answer.
- boomboomsubban 3y agoMy math teachers would have marked it incorrect if I didn't indicate it went on forever, unless the problem stipulated bounds.
- lozenge 3y agoThis is it. He also asked me what the width of the line was and how could I say a line doesn't have a width.
- gizajob 3y ago“Because Euclid says so in the Elements”
- thaumasiotes 3y ago> How did they explain what plotting was without defining a line? Most plots aren't lines, so there's no reason this task would require defining a line. In fact, the shape formed by a graph is called a "curve" for just this reason.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- masklinn 3y agoInterestingly in Elements that is a line: a line was defined only by having no breadth (= being 1-dimensional). What is now generally called a line would have to be qualified as straight.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoDoes that mean that a point is also a line as a point has no breadth
- masklinn 3y agoNo because a line does have a length. In Elements a point is dimension-less.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoOkay, so "a line was defined only by having no breadth" should be "a line was defined only by having length and no breadth"
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago> How did they explain what plotting was without defining a line? Plotting is simply putting a point for a specific value. Drawing the line is inferring the un-plotted points from the plotted ones which may or may not be correct though for y = x - 3, it's easy enough to prove that a straight line covers all the solutions. If "plotting" is only defined in terms of lines, then a student could attempt to plot y = x ^ 2 using only two points and a straight line.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]