Which is bigger, -5 or -6?

lawhec

janeybabe26 wrote: »

I was just going on what my English housemate told me.

I think there was a report recently that stated that Northern Irish schools were doing far better than schools in England. (I think Wales came out better too. Not sure about Scotland.)

Yes, schools in N.Ireland tend to have better results than in England at the top. However there is also a larger percentage of students here that leave with no qualifications compared to England, most of these students live in Greater Belfast. The general rating of school performance at GCSE level is by how many achieve at least 5 passes at Grade C and above, in the Grammars this normally is between 85-95%, secondary schools vary wildly, the average is around 35-45% with the better ones hitting 60-70% and the poorest ones as low as 15%.

Scotland is difficult to compare as they have their own exam structure different to that in the rest of the UK. Almost all schools there, except a few private ones, sit exams under the SQA.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Qualifications_Authority

Ghost Train

at this stage I'm will to settle for -6 is sometimes equal to -5 if you bend the rules of mathematics a little, and they are both less than and greater than each other depending on how you want to look at it

Outer Bongolia

Trevor Welch is bigger than Aidan Cooney.


Thread Closed.

Jesus Wept

-6 - 5 = - 11

What's the confusion.

im_invisible

yeah, but is that
(-6) - (5), or
(-6) + (-5)?

Pherekydes

im_invisible wrote: »

yeah, but is that
(-6) - (5), or
(-6) + (-5)?

Same thing.

fly_agaric

Cheeky_gal wrote: »

No such thing as cold?? ARE YOU STUPID DUDE!? I'm cold right now due to the cold! :rolleyes:

What's so "lol" about it? It does contain more cold...:rolleyes:

...they mean in a "sciencey" way one has "heat" (energy, will depend on how much stuff there is - like that bucket of water/ice cube heat capacity example) and "temperature" (intrinsic property independant of how much stuff there is) - but not "cold".
Losing heat will still make you feel "cold" though...

Talliesin

jor el wrote: »

Next thing they'll be telling us that Dark Suckers don't exist :rolleyes:

Bastard!

Many years ago I wrote something with exactly the same idea (I even called them dark-suckers) and then found someone had just beat me with the same idea. Now the interweb has to drag up the memories

leninbenjamin wrote: »

altight lads, now here's a question to get the heads going...

seeing as something divided by itself is 1, (ie 3/3=1) then why is 0/0 considered indeterminate? i honestly dont know meself so dont expect an answer off me... explanations would be welcomed though.

You could always try the maths forum.
However:

1. x/x = 1
2. 0/x = 0
3. x/0 = ∞

Since 0/0 matches all three, 0/0 is 1, 0 and ∞ which is impossible, hence 0/0 is indeterminate.

eolhc wrote: »

at this stage I'm will to settle for -6 is sometimes equal to -5 if you bend the rules of mathematics a little

In some branches of magic you find the statement 5=6, however this refers not to arithmetic to the correspondence of the microcosm and macrocosm, and in particular the work of Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel that exists in various magical systems with an influence from the קַבָּלָה adapted into a Christian or post-Christian (particularly Thelemetic) system.
I suppose if one were to work with the קליפות then there might me some sort of use for -5=-6
That's what Camelot should do next - a scratch card game based on the Qaballah!

Actually, it's kind of clever of Camelot. If the win/lose ratio is around 1 in 6 (a common ration for scratch cards, though obviously the ration for the bigger prizes is much lower) then for every 6 people who don't understand that they've lost (who Camelot can then bamboozle with primary school maths) there's one who doesn't understand that they've won, and who throws their winning card in the bin.

/edit: missed this one:

astrofool wrote: »

Unless i'm mistaken, celsius and centigrade refer to the same scale.

For practical purposes, yes. 0° Centigrade is defined as temperature of melting ice at standard atmospheric pressure. This cannot be measured with particularly good accuracy. 0° Celsius is defined at 273.15K. Kelvin is in turn defined by absolute-zero with a calibration definition of the triple point of water - which can be measured in practical experiments to a precision of less than 0.00005 degrees.

Hence Centigrade is a less precise measure and Celsius a more precise one, but they are much the same.

Terry

Over 100 replies and plenty of semantics.

Minus 5 is a larger number than minus 6.

I'm dropping my request for my name to be changed to Clancy Wiggum.
I now wish to be known as "The rocket scientist".

Outer Bongolia

So nobody disagrees that -5 is higher than -6?

Jesus Wept

Terry wrote: »

Over 100 replies and plenty of semantics.

Minus 5 is a larger number than minus 6.

I'm dropping my request for my name to be changed to Clancy Wiggum.
I now wish to be known as "Professor Frink", oh glaven!

FYP

mawk

Outer Bongolia wrote: »

So nobody disagrees that -5 is higher than -6?

depends... are we dealing in vectors or scalars?:rolleyes:

boneless

Maths makes the Baby Jesus cry.

Teg Veece

All this talk of "larger", "higher", "bigger", "more colder" is just confusing the matter!

-6 < -5

Lets just leave it at that.

Outer Bongolia

Let that be an end to the matter.