Vleeptron Complaint Department

Mamagiggle said...

I'm no good at math but I did this just to see if my problem solving abilities were up to snuff, so don't laugh if I'm way off
1,802,617,499,785.2541...
or is it 49,858.34....
ugh
why ya askin' us to jump through hoops to prove we read yer blog?

hmmm okay my built-in Windows calculator says the speed of light in a vacuum expressed in Furlongs per Fortnight is zackly what you said it is! Credit your Vleeptron Account with 4 slices! (And I think you live in MA so YOU just might actually collect one of these days!)

So who says you're no good at math? Probly one of your old math teachers ... and the odd thing about that is, WOMEN math teachers tell girls they suck at math just as much as MEN math teachers tell girls they suck at math! (Doonesbury had a nice long sequence on that astonishing cultural fester a few years ago.)

Well ... you read my blog AND you CHOSE to jump thru the hoop! Ya didn't have ta. Ya coulda NOT jumped thru the hoop.

But didn't it feel good to go thru all that excruciating arithmetic and get the right answer? My guess is that puts you in the 99.99913th percentile of all blogreaders and blogeusses and bloggers in C-space.

You are smarter than Pakleds!

Alfred North Whitehead said something sorta cool. Most non-mathematicians assume that professional mathematicians are just naturally very good at math and arithmetic. But quite the contrary is actually the case.

Professional mathematicians tend to grow out of children who are NOT naturally good at arithmetic ... and they are so frustrated at all the difficulty and pain and slowness that they start looking for shortcuts. And they find shortcuts. And then better and faster shortcuts ... and eventually finding shortcuts because they suck at math becomes their profession -- they are Professional Math E-Z Shortcut Answer Finders = Professional Mathematicians.

Here's one minor reason why I like screwy puzzles like that. People are living much longer now. And that may be why so many superannuateds seem to be coming down with Alzheimers. I suspect (because I've read it 23 times in the Readers Digest and Parade, etc.) that intellectual exercise, puzzles, 3-aspirin challenges, mathematical busywork, etc., keep Alzheimers at bay.

Alzheimers will get a chance to take over my brane when I stop doing the screwy puzzles.

That's a dumb sort of reason to work out the volume of a parabaloid once a day -- but I won't think it's so dumb when I start to exhibit Alzheimers symptoms.

I wish I could play the piano. Maybe this is the time to start learning. Pianists seem to be able to play sublime Mozart and Chopin well into their eighties, and I'll bet that does the trick, too. I'm a really great typist -- how hard can training the same fingers to play the piano be?

Also, I figure if I put ALL my effort into just learning to play ONE piece -- Mozart's Turkish Rondo, my fave -- within a year, I can become one of the world's finest players of the Turkish Rondo! If you want me to play "Happy Birthday," I'm screwed. But Turkish Rondo? I'm your guy!