Comment by JohnHaugeland
Comment by JohnHaugeland 3 months ago
"Whole number" means that the mantissa is 0, and is not related to what some random programming language asserts in its representational type system.
Math terms like "whole number" are not defined in terms of the behavior of computer programming languages.
In math, not only are 3.0 and 3 the same thing, but also, so is 2.9999999...
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> They weren't looking to see if you knew the arithmetic with that question, they wanted you to show you understood what they meant by "whole number" and understand you can't just leave arbitrary precision after rounding.
Can you show any math reference that supports this viewpoint? This goes against my college mathematics training.
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> You didn't give the right answer
According to mathematics, 3.0 and 3 are the same thing (and so is the Roman numeral III, and so on.) So is 6/2.
It is deeply and profoundly incorrect to treat an answer as incorrect because the mantissa was written out.
The teacher is simply incorrect, as are you.
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> Just acknowledge you didn't understand what they were looking for and do better next time.
If a teacher asks "what is the country north of Austria," in an English speaking school, and you write "Germany," and the teacher says "no, it's Allemande," they're just incorrect. It doesn't matter if the teacher is French. There are only two ways to look at this: either the correct answer is in the language of the school, or any international answer is acceptable.
A normal person would say "oh, ha ha, Germany and Allemande are the same place, let's just move forwards."
A person interested in defeating and winning, instead of teaching, might demand that the answer come in in some arbitrary incorrect format that they expected. That's a bad teacher who doesn't need to be listened to.
Yes, we know there's also some kid who is explaining to just do as teacher instructs, but no, we're there to learn information, not to learn to obey.
> Can you show any math reference that supports this viewpoint? This goes against my college mathematics training.
> The word integer comes from the Latin integer meaning "whole" or (literally) "untouched", from in ("not") plus tangere ("to touch"). "Entire" derives from the same origin via the French word entier, which means both entire and integer.[9] Historically the term was used for a number that was a multiple of 1,[10][11] or to the whole part of a mixed number.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer
The question was to understand the idea of a "whole number" aka an integer.