with this mod, when trying to make research you need to send a signal using a combination of A and B and a certain mathmatical formula
Problum is I have no idea what the hell it is.
says here "Using the mathematical operator (+-*/)"
I have zero idea what that means as I tried plusing A and Bk, then subtracting it but that gives a zero so I can't continue with the formula
Please help, I want to enjoy this mod, but I can't if I am stuck on something that makes zero sense

You only need one operator at a time. The supercomputer should output a signal of one for which operator you should be using.

SOLUTION: You need 4 arithmetic combinators, one for each operator (A + B, A - B, A * B, A / B), each connected to a decider combinator, which only lets the signals through if the operator signal = 1, you're basically building a 4-function calculator. You can see the setup in the space platform menu sim in the bottom left.

I will try to improve the explanation of the problem in game, but its a matter of finding a balance of sufficient instruction to make it solvable, without giving the answer away.

I believe the current discription, but replacing "Correct mathematical operator" with the "Provided mathematical operator" would probably make it seem more obvious what the equation (A +-*/ B = X) is without telling you the exact circuits to use,

Also for future science packs to make it more complicated i suggest making it so that it provides multiple equations (perhaps A+B-C) with the equation number indicating which step (A = 23 B = 32 C = 5 + = 1 - = 2 becomes 23+32-5)

Progress update: have you ever solved Pythagoras theorem 300 times per minute?

A: Dear god.
B: that would be very amusing.

Sweet Jesus... I love it already

I had trouble as well...for hours trying to understand how circuits work(I've never built my own network) But you'll need 4 deciders and arithmetic combinators. Deciders taking the info then doing one of the 4 tasks (adding,subtracting,dividing,multiplying) then outputting as everything into the arithmetic combinators. The deciders act as what the arithmetic combinators will do so, in the arithmetic have both A and B as the inputs with the relative task from the connected decider then outputting as just X

Yeah, the way i did it was the 4 arithmetics did the math in pararell and fed into one decider each which then checked if it got the equations symbol from the super computer and if so then it pushes the arithmetics signal through

Very nice, Good luck on the second science pack.

It took me embarrassingly long to get exploration data verification working.

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So I get the point of what I'm attempting to do, but for whatever reason the supercomputer isn't accepting the symbol.

I have a green wire going from super computer output terminal to the input of an arithmetic combinator to get the AB and the operative, and a second green wire going from there to the decider combinator to get the operative to compare to let it through.

I have in this specific case, A39, B53, *.

I have them multiplied in the arithmetic combinator to get an X value of 2.0k.

I have that sent via the output on a red wire to the decider combinator so its input signals are X2.0k, A39, B53, *1.

I have its condition set to *=1 so it's outputting 2.0k for X.

But no matter how I wire it up to either the supercomputer itself or the supercomputer input terminal, it's just not reading it. The work status always says "Ready for signal X."

https://i.imgur.com/yGpaW7n.png

Screenshot of the setup.

https://i.imgur.com/XcF1Quv.png

And of the decider combinator.

This looks like a really fascinating mod, I'm having fun, I just have never bothered with circuit conditions so this is absolutely greek to me!

Use the grey signal X from vanilla, X0 is used for something else

It took me embarrassingly long to get exploration data verification working.

Yeah, exploration verification is perhaps a little bit harder than I wanted it to be.
Your design is quite solid though.

Yeah, exploration verification is perhaps a little bit harder than I wanted it to be.

It would be trivial if we had a sqrt function; it's just not something usually needed in Factorio circuits.

I tried using {\displaystyle {\sqrt {a^{2}+b^{2}}}\approx a+{\frac {b^{2}}{2a}}} but it wasn't accurate enough.

I tried another implementation of the Heron method using a new set of combinators for each step, but after something like 20 steps failed to converge I realised that wasn't going to work out well.

My solution is basically copied from here; unfortunately the blueprint code there does not deserialize on current versions of Factorio (it may be from a mod before official support for blueprint export).

That solution is Newton's method as far as I can tell, and it's a really nice one for being so compact and fairly quick.