when 5 isn’t 5.

Standard

“the most painful thing about mathematics

is how far away you are from being able to use it after you have learned it.”

-james newman


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  1. When I was in college, Algebra about killed me. For an entire semester they told us that we could never have negative numbers under the square root symbol. Then, miraculously, the following semester we could! They called them “imaginary” numbers! What in the hell?! It was so ridiculous!

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  2. Somehow I feel like this was “The Emperor Has No Clothes” moment when some child said to a teacher, “Wait, that isn’t 5!”

    One of my old kindergarten parents has a great story about finishing his presentation for Back to School Night and asked the parents if they had any questions. One parent raised his hand and asked, “Has the alphabet changed since I was in school?” The teacher had inadvertently put two letters in the wrong order when he put up the alphabet.😎

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