0055: "Useless"

[kyoung]

Surprised to find no discussion for this.

I wondered if there was any significance to using the inverse Fourier transform in the time domain, instead of the frequency domain. The T-shirt seems to have switched to the forward LaPlace transform in the time domain.

Is there a theoretical reason for this or is it just more experience with teh domain of the heart?

-karl

[LE4dGOLEM]

Surprised to find no discussion for this

because it's old. check earlier pages, and then check forum DoB/that comic upload

[realitymage]

Why is the identity matrix times "heart" a question mark? Isn't the answer just "heart"?

[Belial]

love does not follow your banal mathematical rules.

[Patashu]

Even Nullity can't solve the meaning of love.

[German Sausage]

did you let it try?

[Jesse]

I didn't want to be hurt again.

[TheTankengine]

Nullity may not be able to solve the problem of love, but the concept of nullity certainly can. Nullity is just some arbitrary 'number' that is equal to infinity, because some guy said so to make solving a problem easier in his mind.

Therefore, "nullinitization" will now be equal to 1/love. My work here is done.

[skeptical scientist]

Why is the identity matrix times "heart" a question mark? Isn't the answer just "heart"?

Actually, the alt-text to the original comic was, "Even the identity matrix doesn't work normally." So the answer is who the hell knows?

[cmacis]

Optimistically make it an equivalence relation.

[gmalivuk]

Why is the identity matrix times "heart" a question mark? Isn't the answer just "heart"?

Only if "heart" is matrix with two rows.

Otherwise, it's like multiplying that identity matrix by

Code: Select all

|1 1|
|8 0|
|2 9|

or something.

You'd get a question mark trying to do that, too.

(Edited to account for the realities of matrix multiplication.)

[Yakk]

Why is the identity matrix times "heart" a question mark? Isn't the answer just "heart"?

Only if "heart" is a 2x2 matrix.

Incorrect.

[cmacis]

What i meant was that heart is obviously an equivalence relation;
all x love x
x loves y implies y loves x

Okay, it fails at that point, no need to get onto transitivity.

[gmalivuk]

What i meant was that heart is obviously an equivalence relation;
all x love x
x loves y implies y loves x

Okay, it fails at that point, no need to get onto transitivity.

Yeah, it's definitely a relation, but not equivalence. In reality, it is neither reflexive, symmetric, nor transitive. (That is, some people don't love themselves, much love isn't returned, and if I love Alice who loves Bob, it doesn't mean I love Bob. More likely, I think the guy's a bastard for taking Alice's attention away from me.)

But nonetheless, there's no need to give up quite as easily on understanding it as this mathematician did. Plenty of nonreflexive, nonsymmetric, and nontransitive relationships work just fine in logic.

They just can't be taken as the variables variables of a first-order theory.

[chiggs]

We start by noting that hollywood would teach us that love is the only true constant in the Universe (hey - a thousand heroes can' be wrong!). Using this we get immediately:

d/dx (love) = 0, and

[ [ 1 0 ] [ 0 1 ] ](love) = [ [ love 0 ] [ 0 love ] ]

Next, my mother always told me that "friendship is the root of love" and who am I to argue with my mother? So, although I can't pretend to understand how she derived it, I do know that:

sqrt(love) = friendship

For cos(love) I think we have to start with that old "sine" of love "it's in his kiss" as expounded by Cher. Next we note that to us men, women seem to go off on a tangent at random, while I'm sure women think the same of us. Using

cos(love) = sin(love)/tan(love) we get

cos(love) = kiss/women if you're a man and,

cos(love) = kiss/men if you're a woman

Which leaves is with the Fourier transform of a function f(t) into the love domain (which I won't try to write mathematically here). Clearly we can't really answer this unless given a particular function to transform, but whatever the answer is, being "transformed into the love domain" sounds like it must be good.

Colin.

[6453893]

I'm pretty sure "Transformed into the Love Domain" is the name of a stripper joint in Chicago.

[awkward]

I just realized that the fourier transform on the comic is repleced by a laplace transform on the shirt. spooky.

[Vortigen]

Would it be possible to break down the chemical composition of phermones (or derive some number from it) and plug that into the equation?



Because that would be loads help.

Although... once we got the number... what would we do with it?

[flatluigi]

Although... once we got the number... what would we do with it?

Make a t-shirt?

[Vortigen]

Although... once we got the number... what would we do with it?

Make a t-shirt?

That would be so cool. (LOVE = 78.09342)

[ludwig_van]

This reminds me of a haiku I wrote for my school paper:

Robot wants to know:
What is equation for love?
hotness times money

[antonfire]

Here's the way I see it:

The Fourier Transform gives you the periodic properties of love. Look at its ups and downs, consider how long it'll take until you can love again, and so on. The Laplace Transform gives you the trends of love on various time scales. See how quickly love decays or grows. Find out the overall time scale love operates on, how local its behavior is.

Personally, I think that the Fourier transform is more forward-looking. That cat (love, that is) has some serious periodic components. There's other fish in the sea, that sort of thing. It also looks at love with more people, and how it repeats from relationship to relationship.

The Laplace transform focuses more on now, and how love revolves around what happens now. To me, this hints more towards infatuation than love, in fact. But it also looks more at love with one person, and how that will progress, so in a sense, it's more faithful.

Basically, I think it makes more sense (or perhaps it is just more optimistic) to take the Fourier transform if you're just out of a relationship, and the Laplace transform if you're in one.

(I don't really know that much about the Laplace transform, so if I'm saying something wrong, please correct me.)

Edit: Or maybe it's much more simple. Maybe it just means that you need to look at love sideways.


Aside: why cos(love), and not sin(love)?

[SpitValve]

Aside: why cos(love), and not sin(love)?

Why?

Just 'cos.

[Mike Graham]

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=873

PhD comics today reminded me of this. (PhD comics was funny once, but this changed...when I started grad school, it became just painful.)

[Sprocket]

I had to stop reading this thread because it was turning me on. It doens't help that I'm wearing a thong. All my other underwear are in the wash.

[monkeykoder]

Wondering how many people noticed that the shirt uses the Laplace transform while the comic uses the Fourier transform???

[gruene]

This was from last July in a little town on the Chinese-Mongolian border called Erlian:



The statue is of two Sauropoda making out over a highway:

[Dead Flag]

This thread now contains two awesome first posts. I think hell may be beginning to get slightly chilly.

[Ari]

Those pictures are just way too awesome.

[Cytoplasm]

This was from last July in a little town on the Chinese-Mongolian border called Erlian:



The statue is of two Sauropoda making out over a highway:

That seems like a different form of beastiality.

[Tinned_Tuna]

I totally solved Love.

sqrt(Love) = ?
cos(Love) = ?
let Love = x

sqrt(x) = cos(x)

cos(x) - sqrt(x) = 0

f(x) = cos(x) - sqrt(x)
f'(x) = -sin(x) - 0.5(x^(-0.5))

Using Newton-Raphson Numerical analysis to approximate the root of love:

x(n+1) = x(n) - f(x(n)) / f'(x(n))

using x(0) = 0.5

x(1) = 0.6436756318...
x(2) = 0.6417148668...
x(3) = 0.6417143709...
x(4) = 0.6417143709...
x(5) = 0.6417143709...

Therefore, x = 0.6417143709...
x = Love
so, Love = 0.6417143709...

Problem solved. If I've made a mistake, could someone give us a heads up please, it might help me quite a bit.

[ohki]

I totally solved Love.

sqrt(Love) = ?
cos(Love) = ?
let Love = x

sqrt(x) = cos(x)

...

so, Love = 0.6417143709...

Problem solved. If I've made a mistake, could someone give us a heads up please, it might help me quite a bit.

? is not a variable.

[Tinned_Tuna]

Ahh please, it makes things a lot easier. Though I'd assume that if you do it for all the other things, like d/dy.(Love) against sqrt(Love), you'd get a different answer, I haven't been bothered enough to look into that.

Anyways, why can't ? = ? ?

[AntigenAntibody]

So I'm an immunologist who came up with this while doing a mediocre job in second semester calculus back in 2004:

∫ ♥ d♥ = ♥^2 / 2 + C

so if true love that is founded on solid, awesome things is defined as ♥ > 1
and if fleeting infatuation founded on sub optimal things is 0 < ♥ <1
(0 being the lack of ♥ in the first place)
then the function predicts the future of the love. ♥ will grow if > 1, shrink if less.

divided by two, because there's two people

and plus C. C is circumstance- it can be a positive or negative term. if ♥^2/2 is great enough, then perhaps it can even overcome a negative C with a fairly large absolute value; if ♥ was not that much greater than 1 to begin with, then perhaps it cannot. and of course, we're all wishing for positive C's.

not useless!

[Alica]

I think the point was that we don't know what that integral is. You're assuming it's a variable, eg x or y to use the most common letters. What if it takes on more the form of exp(♥), log(♥), sin(♥) etc?

[ocean_soul]

So he gives up after trying Fourier (or Laplace) transformation? I can think up some more desperate tries. Like a path integral, or this monstrosity.

[SolkaTruesilver]

Randal, I've found it. Love is a geometric probability function

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_distribution)

In short, you will only know failures until you met a success. That's the basis of the function. So, peoples, do no despair if you realise that you only have bad love affair, because IT'S MEANT THAT WAY. If you have 1 good love affair, the theory is you are still living it, and you are not asking yourself that question.

[tradiuz]

Here is an article that might propose the equation for finding a mate. It's not the equation for love, but it is a good step in the right direction.

[Mr. Mack]

Here's an out-there idea.
A heart in an inverted panj, the Farsi (Persian) numeral for five. So maybe heart is the inverse of five, 0.2.
Now I'm only part of the way into trig, so I can't do most of those equations. But I can tell you that the root of love is a non-repeating decimal. So the very root of love is irrational, which is kind of what the comic said in the first place.

[king_rich4]

my math teacher recently became a fan of XKCD, and started thinking about this "Cos (love) = ?" comic. he came up with a great answer.


Cos (love) = Putting a Significant Other above Yourself.

who needs math?