Cassini, Rømer, and the velocity of light (2008)

Re:Cassini, Rømer, and the velocity of light (2008) by Aelinsaar on Friday June 17, 2016 @07:04PM (#11926073)

I so rarely get to learn new words that I've never once encountered before, but this piece had one. "Prostapheresis"

Apparently it's an archaic trigonometric method for approximate multiplication and division.

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Re:Cassini, Rømer, and the velocity of light (2008) by Someone on Friday June 17, 2016 @07:36PM (#11926194)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosthaphaeresis

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Re:Cassini, Rømer, and the velocity of light (2008) by goldenkey on Saturday June 18, 2016 @11:51AM (#11929101)

As a mathematician who is still in the learning phase and intuition is lacking, thank you. This method is ingenius and makes the invention of logarithms make even more sense consequentally. HN rocks :-)

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Re:Cassini, Rømer, and the velocity of light (2008) by Aelinsaar on Friday June 17, 2016 @11:06PM (#11926846)

That was a genuinely enjoyable read, thanks.

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