chasereed on HN Glance

Homosexuality in giraffes and other non-human animals 7 years ago

I agree, but as a gay ex-Mormon, I have seen that educating people about the (mostly) biological origin of homosexuality is the most effective way to break through people’s dogmatic shields and make them start empathizing with gay people.

0Thread HN

What Even Is a Number? 7 years ago

This really just boils down to: Counting is an intuitive thing for us and it's useful to mathematically define it.

0Thread HN

Intuitive Understanding of Euler’s Formula 8 years ago

The proof of the formula is beautiful. It's common to defined the complex exponential as the extension of the Taylor expansion of exp(x) to the complex plane. Thus,

  exp(iy) = 1 + iy + (iy)^2/2! + ...

Now just group the even-numbered terms together and group the odd-numbered terms together, the i's multiply to become 1 in the even numbered terms, and what you get is

  (the Taylor expansion of cos) + i(the Taylor expansion of sin)

0Thread HN