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Poll: Asking for a friend – what do you understand by "6x4"

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Re: Poll: Asking for a friend – what do you understand by "6x4"

#11

Post by Smaug123 »

The context has to be very particular for me not to consider this to be exactly 24 (natural number, not real number) without intermediate representation. I assume we're working over the ring of integers here. In that case, 6x4 is only ever not instantly 24 when it's part of an expression of similar terms (say, 6x1 + 6x2 + 6x3 + 6x4) in which a pattern is being expressed.

If you're not working over the usual ring, though, intuition goes out the window and I think of it as "six-but-not-six blob four-but-not-four". That's because in a module sense, it is 6 (element of ring) times (arbitrary multiplication operation) 4 (element of module).

Re: Poll: Asking for a friend – what do you understand by "6x4"

#14

Post by anonymoushn »

I may have done too much math to give a useful answer. 6 x 4 is the number which is the result of multiplying 6 and 4, here written with the 6 first, but probably not for any particular reason. It doesn't seem like any arrangement of lots or copies of anything, but all the listed arrangements of lots and copies are instances of it. Some other instances that are nothing like the suggested answers are "the area of a rectangle with dimensions 6 and 4" or "the amount of torque you get if you apply 6 Newtons to the end of a 4 meter arm"

Re: Poll: Asking for a friend – what do you understand by "6x4"

#18

Post by coldtea »

MattBearman wrote: post #15

Because it's not in an obviously maths context, I read it as "Six by Four", the first association in my mind for that is cars - 4 x 4 being four wheel drive, so I guess 6 x 4 would be a six wheeled vehicle with 4 driven wheels.

That's probably going too far...
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