Well, we had another of those days where Comic Strip Master Command ordered everybody to do mathematics jokes. I’ll survive.
Don Trachte’s Henry is a reminder that arithmetic, like so many things, is easier to learn when you’re comfortable with the context. Personally I’ve never understood why some of the discs on pool scoring racks are different colors but imagine it relates to scoring values, somehow. I’ve encountered multiple people who assume I must be good at pool, since it’s all geometry, and what isn’t just geometry is physics. I’ve disappointed them all so far.
Tony Rubino and Gary Markstein’s Daddy’s Home uses arithmetic as an example of joy-crushing school drudgery. It could’ve as easily been asking the capital of Montana.
Scott Adams’s Dilbert Classics, a rerun from the 29th of June, 1992, has Dilbert make a breakthrough in knot theory. The fundamental principle is correct: there are many knots that one could use for tying shoelaces, just as there are many knots that could be used for tying ties. Discovering new ones is a good ways for knot theorists to get a bit of harmless publicity. Nobody needs them. From a knot-theory perspetive it also doesn’t matter if you lace the shoe’s holes crosswise or ladder-style. There are surely other ways to lace the holes, too, but nobody needs them either.
Maria Scrivan’s Half Full uses a blackboard full of mathematical symbols and name-drops Common Core. Fifty years ago this same joke was published, somewhere, with “Now solve it using the New Math” as punchline. Thirty years from now it will run again, with “Now solve it using the (insert name here)” as punchline. Some things are eternal truths.
T Lewis and Michael Fry’s Over The Hedge presents one of those Cretan paradox-style logic problems. Anyway, I choose to read it as such. I’m tickled by it.
And to close things out, both Leigh Rubin’s Rubes and Mikael Wulff and Anders Morgenthaler’s WuMo did riffs on the story of Newton and the falling apple. Is this truly mathematically-themed? Well, it’s tied to the legend of calculus’s origin, so that’s near enough for me.
Speaking of knot theory and tying shoes, the third thing that Matt Parker does in this YouTube video is show the most mathematically precise way to tie your shoes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wAaI_6b9JE
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That is a really neat-looking video. I’m going to have to watch it as soon as I can get to a place with better bandwidth. (Our home Internet is terrible for videos, unfortunately, especially as YouTube doesn’t let you buffer worth anything anymore.)
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Henry was a fun strip I followed as a kid… thanks for the memory, signed
Old Geezer
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Glad you like. The comic strip is still running, although it seems to be all reruns. (I guess that’s part of the aesthetic of the Henry comic.) I can’t pin down when they’re from, though, or who did the daily strips that’re repeating.
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