{"id":7992,"date":"2012-03-16T21:28:55","date_gmt":"2012-03-17T02:28:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=7992"},"modified":"2012-03-16T21:31:38","modified_gmt":"2012-03-17T02:31:38","slug":"a-simple-statement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=7992","title":{"rendered":"A simple statement"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of my favorite of all mathematical statements (and many people agree with me on this) is <a href=http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Euler's_identity target=1>Euler&#8217;s identity<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><center><big><big><br \/>\ne<sup>i&pi;<\/sup> + 1 = 0<br \/>\n<\/big><\/big><\/center><br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s frustrating that I cannot explain to my &#8220;friends who are not into math&#8221; just why this simple statement is so extraordinary and beautiful.  Basically, it opens the door to understanding why many things in the universe which at first seem complicated are actually very simple and elegant.<\/p>\n<p>In my mind this statement is a kind of litmus test:  Once someone gets to the point of understanding the profound idea that Euler&#8217;s identity embodies, and why that idea is so profound, simple and lovely all at once, then so much other understanding of the beauty of the universe opens up.<\/p>\n<p>It would be interesting to design a fun and engaging course for &#8220;non-mathematicians&#8221; that specifically leads to this place of understanding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of my favorite of all mathematical statements (and many people agree with me on this) is<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7992"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7992"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7999,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7992\/revisions\/7999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}