Comments

4 - 15 - (-42) - 4*(-5) =

4 - 15 + 42 - (-20) =

4 - 15 + 42 + 20 =

51

-- BarryGarelick - 30 Sep 2005

Why am I getting 52?????

-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Sep 2005

Put new batteries in your calculator!!

-- BarryGarelick - 30 Sep 2005

good lord

i think i may have been taking 7 x 6 and getting 43

i may be WAY too old for this

-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Sep 2005

yup

7 x 6 = 43

-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Sep 2005

Just shoot me now

-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Sep 2005

not ONLY have I been taking 7 x 6 and coming up with 43 (in spite of the fact that I am now FULLY aware of the fact that you CANNOT take an even number times another number and come up with an odd, AND I can more-or-less explain this to a KID).....

not only have I been taking 7 x 6 and coming up with 43, but I have now done so MANY times IN A ROW

which almost certainly means I have now DRILLED 7 X 6 = 43 INTO WHAT'S LEFT OF MY LONG-TERM MEMORY

-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Sep 2005

actually, on the shooting thing, we'll have to wait 'til this afternoon, so I can get Jimmy's VINELAND done at 1:00

-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Sep 2005

i need new batteries in my head

-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Sep 2005

you know, if i'd done this on the calculator, i would have gotten it right

(which raises the question of why i didn't use the calculator to CHECK)

-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Sep 2005

answer: frontal lobes are shot, too

-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Sep 2005

I'm gonna take my shower & go for a run

-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Sep 2005

Once again, the answer depends on Forty-Two.

Creepy.

-- IndependentGeorge - 30 Sep 2005

Go here if you never read Hitchiker's (for shame!)

-- IndependentGeorge - 30 Sep 2005

Of course in this case, 42 is the right answer.

-- DougSundseth - 30 Sep 2005

hey!

no fair!

different people have different answers!

-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Sep 2005

I would have gotten a hundred on the test if I could have estimated everything.

-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Sep 2005

Wait!

What does Douglas Adams think about 42?

-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Sep 2005

I'm getting his book.

On your say-so.

Do you like Terry Pratchet?

-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Sep 2005

The only Terry Pratchet book I ever read was 'Good Omens', co-authored with Neil Gaiman. Hitchiker's is very much in the same style.

42 is the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. An ancient race of pan-dimensional beings contruct a supercomputer to calculate the answer. After several million years of processing, the computer, named "Deep Thought", spits out the answer: 42.

-- IndependentGeorge - 30 Sep 2005

42 is the ultimate answer to life?

-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Sep 2005

No wonder I got it wrong.

-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Sep 2005

"42 is the ultimate answer to life?"

42 is the answer to "what is 6x9". Or possibly something else.

FWIW, Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy didn't do anything for me, though my wife loves it.

-- DougSundseth - 30 Sep 2005

radio fans are strange.
th' hitch-hiker's_guide is
somewhere between garrison keilor
and the goon_show. i yawn. fiercely.

give me the the firesign theatre
or give me straight up rock-n-roll.
classical will also do (and'll prob'ly have fewer ads).
negativland is also pretty interesting.
but go ahead and find 'em on the @##$$$!!! radio.

i spent one of my worst half-hours in grad school
convinced that 3*12 = 39. looked all over
the place for the mistake i knew had to be
there somewhere ...

-- VlorbikDotCom - 01 Oct 2005

The Goon Show!! My favorite!

Grytpipe Thynne: Neddy, why are you wearing your pants on your head?

Neddy: You know I always wear my pants on me pants on me head on Tuesdays.

Grytpipe: But today is Wednesday.

Neddy: Oh! I feel a proper fool!

-- BarryGarelick - 01 Oct 2005

i spent one of my worst half-hours in grad school convinced that 3*12 = 39.

This is going in Wit and Wisdom Kitchen Table Math.

-- CatherineJohnson - 01 Oct 2005

I just realized: an unsung metacognitive hazard of trying to learn math is that, since you know you don't know anything, you can spend hours thinking you have no clue how to do a problem, when in fact you've made a minor error in computation.

Last weekend I was almost beside myself, trying to do some da** problem, and finally I made Ed sit down with me & tell me how to do it.

Well, I had done it, but I'd put the decimal point in the wrong place or something, resulting in the Great Big kind of error that says to you: you don't know what you're doing.

I had spent a LONG time doing and re-doing that problem, and ALWAYS putting the decimal point in the wrong place.....

(I don't think that was it, exactly, but close enough.)

Come to think of it, I was having the problem Wickelgren always talks about: I was using signs & symbols that had to stand for different things in different context, or all looked alike, or whatever. In this one problem I'd gotten them mixed up, and then didn't stop to think maybe that's what I'd done.

-- CatherineJohnson - 01 Oct 2005

radio fans?

-- CatherineJohnson - 01 Oct 2005

You can do this problem in a calculator that obeys the rules for order of operations in one step. It is important - and many calculator educated students don't understand this aspect of the calculator - to remember that there is no fraction bar in a calculator, just a division key. For example, if you want to evaluate the sum of 3 and 2 divided by the sum of 5 and 5, you must input (3+2)/(5+5) into the calculator even though we may see this written or printed as a fraction with no parentheses. Likewise if we want to calculate the square root of 5+20 it is essential to use parentheses after the square root sign so that the addition will be done first, even though we usually write and print this expression without the use of parentheses.

-- CharlesWilliams - 02 Oct 2005

I didn't even know there WERE calculators programmed to do order of operations.

-- CatherineJohnson - 10 Oct 2005