Reading the Comics, November 3, 2018: Arithmetic Is Hard Edition

If there is a theme to the last comic strips from the previous week, it’s that kids find arithmetic hard. That’s a title for you.

Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes for the 2nd is one of the classics, of course. Calvin’s made the mistake of supposing that mathematics is only about getting true answers. We’ll accept the merely true, if that’s what we can get. But we want interesting. Which is stuff that’s not just true but is unexpected or unforeseeable in some way. We see this when we talk about finding a “proper” answer, or subset, or divisor, or whatever. Some things are true for every question, and so, who cares?

Also, is it really true that Calvin doesn’t know any of his homework problems? It’s possible, but did he check?

Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes rerun for the 2nd of November, 2018. It first appeared the 4th of November, 1988.

Were I grading, I would accept an “I don’t know”, at least for partial credit, in certain conditions. Those involve the student writing out what they would like to do to try to solve the problem. If the student has a fair idea of something that ought to find a correct answer, then the student’s showing some mathematical understanding. But there are times that what’s being tested is proficiency at an operation, and a blank “I don’t know” would not help much with that.

Patrick Roberts’s Todd the Dinosaur for the 2nd of November, 2018. I admit I’m not sure Botox works on eyelids like this. But that’s for whoever writes Reading the Comics for the Medical Stuff. Also I’m not sure what you would add the denominators for, but it’s late at night when I write this. I’m probably overlooking the obvious.

Patrick Roberts’s Todd the Dinosaur for the 2nd has an arithmetic cameo. Fractions, particularly. They’re mentioned as something too dull to stay awake through. So for the joke’s purpose this could have been any subject that has an exposition-heavy segment. Fractions do have more complicated rules than adding whole numbers do. And introducing those rules can be hard. But anything where you introduce rules instead of showing what you can do with them is hard. I’m thinking here of several times people have tried to teach me board games by listing all the rules, instead of setting things up and letting me ask “what am I allowed to do now?” the first couple turns. I’m not sure how that would translate to fractions, but there might be something.

John Zakour and Scott Roberts’s Maria’s Day for the 2nd of November, 2018. I do like it when a comic strip finds reasons to stretch artistically. Superhero fantasy sequences are often good pretexts.

John Zakour and Scott Roberts’s Maria’s Day for the 2nd has another of Maria’s struggles with arithmetic. It’s presented as a challenge so fierce it can defeat even superheroes. Could be any subject, really. It’s hard to beat the visual economy of having it be a division problem, though.

Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott’s Baby Blues for the 3rd of November, 2018. Oh, like it’s possible to finish any even slightly complicated Lego project.

Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott’s Baby Blues for the 3rd shows a bit of youthful enthusiasm. Hammie’s parents would rather that enthusiasm be put to memorizing multiplication facts. I’m not sure this would match the fun of building stuff. But I remember finding patterns inside the multiplication table fascinating. Like how you could start from a perfect square and get the same sequence of numbers as you moved out along a diagonal. Or tracing out where the same number appeared in different rows and columns, like how just everything could multiply into 24. Might be worth playing with some.

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All of my Reading the Comics posts should be at this link. Essays where I take the chance to talk about Calvin and Hobbes are at this link. Essays that include Todd the Dinosaur are at this link. Essays with a mention of Maria’s Day should be at this link. And essays with a mention of Baby Blues are at this link. Finally, and through the rest of the year, my Fall 2018 Mathematics A-To-Z should be getting two new posts a week. Thanks again for reading.

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