I was on Google looking for some famous math quotes for my bulletin boards at school. My counselor friend there and another friend have taken it upon themselves to set up my bulletin boards and wanted some quotes to put up.
Among the other quotes by Albert Einstein, Plato, Leonardo Da Vinci and others, I found this amusing one:
“In the fall of 1972, President Nixon announced that the rate of increase of inflation was decreasing. This was the first time a sitting president used the third derivative to advance his case for reelection." – My dad.
Now, I know he’s been a math professor since before I was even born, and I don’t even know if he meant it to be funny. But, knowing Calculus and his sense of humor (having inherited it), I couldn’t help but get a hearty chuckle from it. And, of course, a little pride in his being quoted on several sites alongside those other people.
3 comments:
It's definitely cool that your dad got quoted with the likes of DaVinci, Plato, and Einstein, but I can guarantee that your students will not get the joke. I barely get the joke.
Let me put it this way, during our faculty "talent" show, our drama teacher and our math dept. head did an Abott and Costello skit with a math joke in which they added up numbers incorrectly. Only the very brightest kids got that one, and it was about ADDING. Trust me; your kids are NOT going to get a joke about Nixon and derivatives.
Oh yeah, I'm fully aware of that. Even the highly advanced kids in junior high would not have made it to Calculus yet, so I'd be more than amazed if any of them got it. There was another quote that I really liked, by some unknown author, that I'll probably use, since some of the more computer literate students might get:
"There are 10 types of people; those who understand binary and those who don't".
Yeah, that one's good.
There's also the one about 5/4 people have trouble with fractions.
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