Reading the Comics, September 24, 2018: Carnival Delay Edition

It’s unusual for me to have a Reading the Comics post on Monday, but that’s what fits my schedule. The Playful Mathematics Education Blog Carnival took my Sunday spot, and Tuesday and Friday I hope to continue the A to Z posts. It’s going to be a rather full week. I’m looking forward to, I hope, surviving. Meanwhile, here’s some comics.

Mike Thompson’s Grand Avenue for the 23rd resumes its efforts to become my archenemy with a strip about why learn arithmetic. Michael is right that we don’t need people to do multiplication. So why should we learn it? Grandmom Kate offers only the answer that he’ll be punished if he doesn’t learn them. This could motivate Michael to practice multiplication tables. But it’ll never convince him that learning multiplication tables is something of value.

Mike Thompson’s Grand Avenue for the 23rd of September, 2018. So, not to nitpick the writing of these strips. Comic strip dialogue is subject to a great number of constraints that aren’t obvious, and that constrain how naturalistic it can be. But the dialogue flow is a slight wreck. Third panel to fourth, Grandmom goes from saying not knowing the multiplication tables won’t hurt you to saying it will hurt you and your allowance. Then, fourth panel to fifth, Michael goes from hearing he and his allowance will be hurt to wondering if there’s a possibility he might not get his allowance. It’s like they’re having different drafts of the conversation.

That said, what would convince him? It’s ridiculous to suppose Michael would be in a spot where he’d need to know eight times seven right away and without a computer to tell him. I find a certain amount of arithmetic-doing fun. But I already like doing it. (I admit a bootstrapping problem. Do I find it fun because I do it well, or do I do arithmetic well because I find it fun? I don’t know.) And that I find something fun is a lousy argument that everyone should learn to do it. I can argue that practicing multiplication tables is practice for finding neat patterns in other things, in higher mathematics. But is that reason to care? If Michael isn’t interested in eight times seven, is he going to be interested in the outer products of the set of symmetries on the octagon and the permutations of the heptagon?

I don’t have an actual answer here. I think it’s worth learning to do arithmetic. But not because we need people to do arithmetic. At least not except when we’re too lazy to take out our phones. But “or else you’ll lose money” is a terrible reason.

Dave Whamond’s Reality Check for the 23rd of September, 2018. That fourth panel happens to me, by the way, anytime I recount some odd, slightly awkward interaction that I have. And my family heritage is such that I’m a carrier of awkward interactions. Not to brag, but include a Nebus in your social circle and you’re more than ten times more likely than you ever imagined you could be to have responsibility for a styrofoam-peanut whirlwind, for example.

Dave Whamond’s Reality Check for the 23rd is a smorgasbord strip of things cartoonists get told too often. It comes in here because I like the strip, and because the punch line is built in the fear of arithmetic. It’s traditional to think that cartoonists, as artists, haven’t got an interest in mathematics or science. I can’t deny that the time it takes to learn how to draw, and the focus it takes to make a syndication-worthy comic strip, hurt someone’s ability to study much mathematics. And vice-versa. But people are a varied bunch. Bill Amend, of FoxTrot, and Bud Grace, of the discontinued The Piranha Club, were both physics majors. Darrin Bell, of Candorville and Rudy Park, writes well about mathematical (and scientific) topics. Crockett Johnson, of the renowned 1940s comic strip Barnaby and the Harold and the Purple Crayon books, was literate enough in mathematics to do over a hundred paintings based on geometry theorems. Part of why I note when the mathematics put into the background of a strip is that I do like pointing out there’s no reason artists and mathematicians or scientists need to be separate people.

Tony Carrillo’s F Minus for the 24th of September, 2018. Question four is about how many people named Timmy are in class.

Tony Carrillo’s F Minus for the 24th uses the form of the story problem. This one of the classic form of apples distributed amongst people. The problem presented makes its politics bare. But any narrative, however thin, carries along with it cultural values. That mathematicians may work out things whose truth is (we believe) independent of the posed problem doesn’t mean the posed problem is universal.

Steve Boreman’s Little Dog Lost rerun for the 24th of September, 2018. This is a rerun from the 8th of September, 2009. Little Dog Lost has ended its run, and of gentle comic strips it’s one that I particularly miss.

Steve Boreman’s Little Dog Lost rerun for the 24th is the Roman Numerals joke for the week. There is a connotation of great age to anything written in Roman Numerals. Likely because we are centuries past the time they were used for anything but ornament. And even in ornament they seem to be declining in age. I do wonder if the puniness of, say, ‘MMI’ or ‘MMXX’ as a sequence of numerals, compared to (say) ‘MCMXLVII’ makes it look better to just write ‘2001’ or ‘2020’ instead.

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The full set of Reading the Comics posts should be at this link. Essays that discuss Grand Avenue should be at this link. This and other appearances by Reality Check should be at this link. Appearances by F Minus are at this link. And other essays with Little Dog Lost should be at this link. Thanks for reading along.