THANK YOU!!! I hate it when this happens. I usually reply with “I’m a math major, not an accounting major”. I’m sure this scenario is one of the largest pet peeves shared by math geeks.
Yeah, so annoying. That response is fantastic!
Going out with a group of math majors is fun; it takes about as long to figure out how much we’re all paying as it does to eat.
At Caltech, we actually have a running joke where the math majors are not allowed to calculate the bill/tip/etc. Often, one will hear “OK, I need a non-math major to calculate the tip here!”
(The reason being, of course, that we have all forgotten how arithmetic works, being so muddled in abstract nonsense.)
Of course, I met a few neuro students at the orientation for grad school, and they seem just fine… heck, I’ll probably be doing some stuff with neuro since I’m (gasp) applied!
There is a theory that each person has a finite width “window” for retaining mathematical/numerical knowledge. So as one proceeds to acquire higher math, at some point one begins to lose “lower math”. The width of the window is not constant over the population of people. In some departments, this effect is partially overcome by forcing the upper level students to teach lower-division classes — thereby reacquainting them with addition, subtraction, and what actual numbers look like…
But never let the advanced measure theoretician/logician split the bill — he’ll choose to decompose it into two bills with the same amount due. (Bananach-Tarski… Heh.)
Haha. I always spend the whole dinner talking about math puzzles, but when the check comes, I hand my wallet over to whoever’s sitting next to me and say “uhh… I’m going to the bathroom.”
I don’t know many mathematicians who can add well enough to calculate the shares, anyway. They lose the skill some time after calculus.
THANK YOU!!! I hate it when this happens. I usually reply with “I’m a math major, not an accounting major”. I’m sure this scenario is one of the largest pet peeves shared by math geeks.
ok back to HW
Yeah, so annoying. That response is fantastic!
Going out with a group of math majors is fun; it takes about as long to figure out how much we’re all paying as it does to eat.
At Caltech, we actually have a running joke where the math majors are not allowed to calculate the bill/tip/etc. Often, one will hear “OK, I need a non-math major to calculate the tip here!”
(The reason being, of course, that we have all forgotten how arithmetic works, being so muddled in abstract nonsense.)
I really enjoy the neuro student’s facial expression.
Of course, I met a few neuro students at the orientation for grad school, and they seem just fine… heck, I’ll probably be doing some stuff with neuro since I’m (gasp) applied!
There is a theory that each person has a finite width “window” for retaining mathematical/numerical knowledge. So as one proceeds to acquire higher math, at some point one begins to lose “lower math”. The width of the window is not constant over the population of people. In some departments, this effect is partially overcome by forcing the upper level students to teach lower-division classes — thereby reacquainting them with addition, subtraction, and what actual numbers look like…
But never let the advanced measure theoretician/logician split the bill — he’ll choose to decompose it into two bills with the same amount due. (Bananach-Tarski… Heh.)
Haha. I always spend the whole dinner talking about math puzzles, but when the check comes, I hand my wallet over to whoever’s sitting next to me and say “uhh… I’m going to the bathroom.”