NEED HELP MATHS dodgy fractional algebra indices :P

I flunked my last maths test 40% and i'm in top set and now i have to do corrections on my test aagh!

One of the main thigns I don't underatnd is this:

(X to the power of 2/3)to the power of 3

It looks dodgy like that but can someone take me through how to work that out?

Well what does x equal?

Exponents like that follow this rule.

That 2/3 if then raised again to the 3... follow a multiply rule.

2/3 times 3/1 = 2.

So simplified it's x to the 2.

It doesn't matter was X is.

Originally Posted by Genesis

Well what does x equal?

X is a variable, dear

"x commonly represents an unknown variable. Even though any letter can be used, x is the most common by far."

Basically, X is a placeholder that indicates that any possible number could go there and that the number itself doesn't really matter in the current situation.

Originally Posted by Lozzie

Exponents like that follow this rule.

That 2/3 if then raised again to the 3... follow a multiply rule.

2/3 times 3/1 = 2.

So simplified it's x to the 2.

It doesn't matter was X is.

wahoo! wow, I can't believ I didn't even think how 3=3/1 sheesh! Thanks for solving it

...

I know what a variable is. I just meant whta did that x equal.
But I didn't know that x didn't matter

Well actually, if x is a number (complex, real, wathever...) then (x^(2/3))^3 = x^2... if not, you have to check the definitions...

also, be careful:

(x^(2/3))^3 = x^2

however:

x^(2/3)^3 = x^(8/27)

"^" means: to the power of

How the heck do you guys learn all this stuff?(besides pay attention. I've already tried that.)

This is Grade 10/11 or so math, so if you're not in Grade 10/11 that would be why you don't know it.

I'm in eleventh grade thank you very much... I just might have failed algebra 1-2 a couple of times. I tend to lean towards the literary arts more than numbers. Words express emotion and creativity, numbers do not.

hmm... numbers do not express emotion and creativity indeed, however, mathematics is not just the "number science"... Weierstrass once said you have to be a good poet to become a great mathematician... what they teach you in school is not true mathematics, it's just the result of all the imagination and creativity of this great mathematicians, just operational methods derived from their beautiful works of art.

Originally Posted by Rock lee

hmm... numbers do not express emotion and creativity indeed, however, mathematics is not just the "number science"... Weierstrass once said you have to be a good poet to become a great mathematician... what they teach you in school is not true mathematics, it's just the result of all the imagination and creativity of this great mathematicians, just operational methods derived from their beautiful works of art.

COuldn't have said it better myself Rock Lee.

-NC

Originally Posted by ShInEr

I'm in eleventh grade thank you very much... I just might have failed algebra 1-2 a couple of times. I tend to lean towards the literary arts more than numbers. Words express emotion and creativity, numbers do not.

True, but as Poe said in his Philosophy of Composition:

Originally Posted by Edgar Allen Poe

Most writers- poets in especial- prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy- an ecstatic intuition- and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes, at the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought- at the true purposes seized only at the last moment- at the innumerable glimpses of idea that arrived not at the maturity of full view- at the fully-matured fancies discarded in despair as unmanageable- at the cautious selections and rejections- at the painful erasures and interpolations- in a word, at the wheels and pinions- the tackle for scene-shifting- the step-ladders, and demon-traps- the cock's feathers, the red paint and the black patches, which, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, constitute the properties of the literary histrio.

...

It is my design to render it manifest that no one point in its composition is referable either to accident or intuition- that the work proceeded step by step, to its completion, with the precision and rigid consequence of a mathematical problem.

Math and poetry, according to Poe, are intertwined. Read the essay. It's surprisingly good.

math and X are interwined, where X belongs to the "set of everything" (hmmm, I have to be careful with the kantor paradox)... ha.

So Poe thinks it too eh... I think I'll read this philosophy of composition...


Rhox, do you have any other question?

(no matter how interesting, it seems we were losing the point of this thread...)