The thread for all things math. Want to clear up a problem? Or convolute it more? Or just share weird math facts or jokes? This is the decimal place for it!
I am basically math illiterate, but if you want a math anecdote, here is an embarrassing one from the state I live in.
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One of my favorite math things:
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this thread is clearly derivative
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But seriously, the darkest chapter of my life was spent trying to explain to someone why dividing by zero was an impossibility.
I don’t ever want to have to do that again.
[has war flashbacks]
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DON’T TELL ME WHAT I CAN’T DO!
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(If you’ve never seen Look Around You, it’s a hilarious very short British show from the 2000s- co-written by Peter Serafinowicz- made to look like it was made in the 1980s educational shows and done brilliantly.)
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no
NO
NO
NO
I CAN’T DO THIS AGAIN
I CAN’T GO BACK TO THAT AGAIN
I CAN’T IRREVOCABLY LOSE MINUTES FROM MY LIFE TO EXPLAIN THAT YOU CAN’T DIVIDE BY ZERO EVER AGAIN
[hyperventilates into paper bag]
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I was in a store once and there was an item that was 20% off, and the cashier was trying to figure out how much the discount should be, and he likened it to figuring out a tip. So I thought I’d help him out with a little shortcut and a good tool for life in general, and told him all he had to do was figure 10%, which is nothing more than moving the decimal point - easy peasy - and multiply that by 2.
And his face changed in what I initially thought was an epiphany of a life changed for the better… but then he said “I feel like that meme of the woman with all the math symbols floating around her face.” So “don’t shop at that store” was the only lesson learned that day.
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That’s still too hard for me. Seriously.
Oh wow! The only time we’ve ever seen that show was in a hotel near the Grand Canyon. It was truly bizarre.
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One of my favorite things ever.
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My best subject in school until senior year with pre calc.
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A classic bit of terribly cursed math: the Banach-Tarski paradox. Using five bits of a sphere, you can turn one sphere into two spheres of the same size.