The past week included another Friday the 13th. Several comic strips found that worth mention. So that gives me a theme by which to name this look over the comic strips.
Charles Schulz’s Peanuts rerun for the 12th presents a pretty wordy algebra problem. And Peppermint Patty, in the grips of a math anxiety, freezing up and shutting down. One feels for her. Great long strings of words frighten anyone. The problem seems a bit complicated for kids Peppermint Patty’s and Franklin’s age. But the problem isn’t helping. One might notice, say, that a parent’s age will be some nice multiple of a child’s in a year or two. That in ten years a man’s age will be 14 greater than the combined age of their ages then? What imagination does that inspire?
Grant Peppermint Patty her fears. The situation isn’t hopeless. It helps to write out just what know, and what we would like to know. At least what we would like to know if we’ve granted the problem worth solving. What we would like is to know the man’s age. That’s some number; let’s call it M. What we know are things about how M relates to his daughter’s and his son’s age, and how those relate to one another. Since we know several things about the daughter’s age and the son’s age it’s worth giving those names too. Let’s say D for the daughter’s age and S for the son’s.
So. We know the son is three years older than the daughter. This we can write as 
So this is a system of three equation, all linear, in three variables. This is hopeful. We can hope there will be a solution. And there is. There are different ways to find an answer. Since I’m grading this, you can use the one that feels most comfortable to you. The problem still seems a bit advanced for Peppermint Patty and Franklin.
Julie Larson’s The Dinette Set rerun for the 13th has a bit of talk about a mathematical discovery. The comic is accurate enough for its publication. In 2008 a number known as M43112609 was proven to be prime. The number, 243,112,609 – 1, is some 12,978,189 digits long. It’s still the fifth-largest known prime number (as I write this).
Prime numbers of the form 2N – 1 for some whole number N are known as Mersenne primes. These are named for Marin Mersenne, a 16th century French friar and mathematician. They’re a neat set of numbers. Each Mersenne prime matches some perfect number. Nobody knows whether there are finite or infinitely many Mersenne primes. Every even perfect number has a form that matches to some Mersenne prime. It’s unknown whether there are any odd perfect numbers. As often happens with number theory, the questions are easy to ask but hard to answer. But all the largest known prime numbers are Mersenne primes; they’re of a structure we can test pretty well. At least that electronic computers can test well; the last time the largest known prime was found by mere mechanical computer was 1951. The last time a non-Mersenne was the largest known prime was from 1989 to 1992, and before that, 1951.
Mark Parisi’s Off The Mark for the 13th starts off the jokes about 13 for this edition. It’s also the anthropomorphic-numerals joke for the week.
Doug Savage’s Savage Chickens for the 13th is a joke about the connotations of numbers, with (in the western tradition) 7 lucky and 13 unlucky. And many numbers just lack any particular connotation.
T Shepherd’s Snow Sez for the 13th finishes off the unlucky-13 jokes. It observes that whatever a symbol might connote generally, your individual circumstances are more important. There are people for whom 13 is a good omen, or for whom Mondays are magnificent days, or for whom black cats are lucky.
These are all the comics I can write paragraphs about. There were more comics mentioning mathematics last week. Here were some of them:
Brian Walker, Greg Walker, and Chance Browne’s Hi and Lois for the 14th supposes that a “math nerd” can improve Thirsty’s golf game.
Bill Amend’s FoxTrot Classics for the 14th, rerunning a strip from 1997, is a word problem joke. I needed to re-read the panels to see what Paige’s complaint was about.
Greg Evans’s Luann Againn for the 14th, repeating a strip from 1991, is about prioritizing mathematics homework. I can’t disagree with putting off the harder problems. It’s good to have experience, and doing similar but easier problems can help one crack the harder ones.
Jonathan Lemon’s Rabbits Against Magic for the 14th is the Rubik’s Cube joke for the week.
And that’s my comic strips for the week. I plan to have the next Reading the Comics post here on Sunday. The A to Z series resumes tomorrow, all going well. I am seeking topics for the letters I through N, at this post. Thank you for reading, and for offering your thoughts.
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