school teacher was arrested (had ruler, protractor,setsquare,calculator)

[papau]

From my youngest nephew's math class:

At New York's Kennedy airport
today, an individual later
discovered to be a public
school teacher was arrested
trying to board a flight while
in possession of a ruler, a
protractor, a setsquare, a
slide rule, and a calculator.

At a morning press conference,
Attorney general John Ashcroft
said he believes the man is a
member of the notorious al-gebra
movement. He is being charged
by the FBI with carrying weapons
of math instruction.

"Al-gebra is a fearsome cult,"
Ashcroft said. "They desire
average solutions by means and
extremes, and sometimes go off on
tangents in a search of absolute
value. They use secret code
names like "x" and "y" and refer
to themselves as "unknowns", but
we have determined they belong to
a common denominator of the axis
of medieval with coordinates in
every country.

"As the Greek philanderer Isosceles
used to say, there are 3 sides to
every triangle," Ashcroft declared.

When asked to comment on the arrest,
President Bush said, "If God had
wanted us to have better weapons of
math instruction, He would have given
us more fingers and toes.

"I am gratified that our government
has given us a sine that it is intent
on protracting us from these math-dogs
who are willing to disintegrate us
with calculus disregard. Murky
statisticians love to inflict plane on
every sphere of influence," the
President said, adding: "Under the
circumferences, we must differentiate
their root, make our point, and draw the
line."

President Bush warned, "These weapons
of math instruction have the
potential to decimal everything in
their math on a scalene never before
seen unless we become exponents of a
Higher Power and begin to factor-in
random facts of vertex."

Attorney General Ashcroft said, "As our
Great Leader would say, read my ellipse.
Here is one principle he is uncertainty
of: though they continue to multiply,
their days are numbered as the
hypotenuse tightens around their
necks."

[KG]

1. heh

:)

[neuvocat]

2. You never know:

they might try to smuggle grid squares next.

[onebigbadwulf]

3. Was interesting for 2 paragraphs...

then I stopped enjoying it.

[papau]

6. For 15 - I thought it a good effort!

:-)

[Kolesar]

4. Algebra? Sounds kind of Arabic to me

Some times we cannot be too careful if we want to defend our freedoms.

[DemoTex]

5. Algebra IS Arabic.

It should be banned! Let students go directly into the English/German calculus (developed by Newton and Leibniz, independently and simultaneously, without the help of algebra-speaking Arabs). As an engineering graduate of Georgia Tech, I know just how useless algebra is (NOT!)

BTW: A great read on calculus and it's development (for Dummies) is David Berlinski's A Tour of the Calculus. I do love the math, algebra, and calculus. Especially calculus.

[ajacobson]

7. God Bless You

I cried like a baby when I took Finite Mathmatics. I ended up doing ok in it but man oh man, it was like having a root canal for 16 weeks.

[omshanti]

9. Algebra comes from the Arabic Al-sifar (sp?), which means zero.

The Arabs invented the concept of zero. I mean, they didn't exactly invent it, zero was there all along, but they were the first to use the concept of zero in mathematics.
The Romans had no representation for the number zero.

The history of math is very interesting. I think a lot of people would have a better appreciation of math if they knew the origins of some of the concepts they learn. Like the meaning of pi, for example.

No need to thank me, just your friendly neighborhood math geek here.
:hi:

[Dead_Parrot]

8. Thank you...

...I just choked my lunch all over the keyboard. As someone who has too many math qualifications than is strictly necessary, I loved it...