Man, I really gotta sit down and watch the show 'Numb3rs' some time. I keep remembering one or two bits, and the way they tried to cram mathematics into every episode was hilarious.
There was one bit where they knew two facts about some bad guy, say that he had a mustache and drove a Mazda or something (i forget the details), then math genius guy jumps up and says "you know what we need in this sort of situation? Venn Diagrams. You see this circle represents people with mustaches, and this circle represents people who drive Mazdas. This section in the middle represents people who have mustaches and drive Mazdas. And we can use that to narrow down the suspects". *goes to computer and just clicks a couple buttons to filter the search results.
I mean, big effort incorporating maths, I guess? If they already had the fucking software to filter the search results, where did the Venn Diagram come in again? A monkey could have come up with that.
I can write my own scenes for this show:
Cop 1 : "how much change you got? I have $5"
Cop 2 : "I have $3. The box of donuts is $7, right?"
Math 'Genius' : "You know what we need? "Addition". "Addition", usually signified by the plus symbol *draws a plus symbol on whiteboard* is one of the four basic operations of arithmetic; the others are subtraction, multiplication and division. The addition of two whole numbers is the total amount of those values combined. *draws apples on the board*. If one person has three apples and another has two apples, then we can use "addition" to get a total amount. One, two three, four, five apples is the total. Addition is also "commutative", meaning that if we add the two apples to three apples we get the same result as adding three apples to two apples. Both result in five apples. In this situation, with you having five dollars and the other having three dollars, then we can use "addition" to "combine" the amounts and determine whether there is sufficient money to be able to afford the donuts. *whips out calculator*. This is a calculator, it comes with the "addition" function built in. *adds numbers* Adding the two values reveals an "addition" total of eight dollars. Now we need to determine whether the "addition" total equals or exceeds the cost of the donuts. *draws number line on board*. ..."
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Topic: Things that made you laugh today: some people notice when 1 change the title (Read 1550782 times)