Wednesday, November 12, 2008

When Adults Lie


So math is a waste of time.  It is official now.   People thought math might be a waste of time, but they didn’t want to come right out and say it.  They were being politically correct, they claimed to be reserving judgement.  Well that may be true, but my judgement has been made.  The verdict?  Math is useless.  Oh you might be thinking.  Big woop.  Nobody but engineers and dumb people have used the math learned in the final years of high school.  That may be true, but I was one of the believers.  Like I mentioned in a this post.  My grade 10 advanced functions teacher told me mathematics is important, and I believed him.  That is until now. 

Before I discovered that math womps i vigilantly looked out for occasions where I could put my math knowledge to good use.  And six years after grade 11 calculus, I found an opportunity to use the basic calculus formulas that I painstakingly etched into my brain.  At work I received an email from the lady in charge of social shit.  It was cryptic to say the least, the email said there was a mysterious jar of mysterious jelly beans.  Only she knew how many jelly beans were inside, and she promised a prize for someone who could successfully send her a reply email with the correct amount of jelly beans.  What can I say?  My eyes lit up, i grin spread across my face and I became sexually aroused in the way only a math problem could achieve.  You know what I mean guys, I became so aroused it hurt.  The kind of arousal where...well never mind. 

So there I was a woody the size of Woody Allen himself, and I could hear the voice of my grade 10 advanced functions teacher whispering to me in the wind.  “Remember your mathematics”.  I wasted no time.  I enlisted the help of an accountant.  Together we would tackle the math problem and show everyone who cool it is to be smart.  Together we gathered the necessary tools.  Ruler? Check.  Pen? Check.  Paper?  Check.  Internet?  Double Check.  Once I forgot to bring the internet with me on a camping trip and I had to borrow the internet from a fellow camper.  SO EMBARRASSING. 

Together my assistant and I approached the mysterious jar.  With tools in hand we measured the properties of the jar and noted any irregularities.  You know, bumps scratches...anything that might tweak our numbers.  This wasn’t the time to get sloppy.  Our calculations had to be perfect.  Next we used the internet to find the dimensions of the average jelly bean.  I asked my assistant, “Do they Jelly beans look about average?”  She responded, “Maybe a bit above average.”  Adjust the numbers than damnit!  We added one millimetre to diameter of an average jelly bean.  This wasn’t no Mickey Mouse operation.  We were thorough, I know I’m repeating myself here, but it’s important that you understand, we calculated for jelly bean jitter, awkward spaces and empty space.  We studied the jar for five minutes.

We submitted our paper to the social shit girl.  Confident that our effort would yield us first prize.  By our calculation there should have been 300 jelly beans in the jar.  I was visibly excited, when I am announced winner I thought I will decree I used calculus, and therefore showing the young and impressionable minds that math always works.  Always.  I did it for the Glory of math.  When I received the e-mail announcing the winner I thought there must have been some error.  My name is not Helena.  What the FUCK!?  We used science!  I confronted the supposed winner.  “What was your method!?”  I implored.  What type of size jitter calculation did you use!?  She looked right in my face, and told me she guessed.  She guessed 350 jelly beans and she was the closest.

So there you have it.  Math is terrible I’m tearing my old calculus books to shreds as I write this.  Books are important and should be preserved, but not lying books filled with lies.  So I torched it.  My heart is broken...if physics let’s me down, I don’t know what I’ll do.

2 comments:

simplysteph said...

you should have used them statistics skills.

Couture Carrie said...

That is hysterical!

xoxox,
CC