Funny incidents while teaching maths!

I heard some jokes on teaching mathematics. They may be funny but the sad part is that they are not completely away from reality. It is actually quite a sad situation!

Well here are the stories!

Division of numbers and division of money

Some experts wanted to assess the quality of mathematics teaching in remote villages. They went to one such village, and asked the ninth standard students there to divide 1224 by 6. Most of them answered 24. Yeah! That's right, the students answered 24. The people were shocked. After a whole day of discussions, one of the experts thought of testing their knowledge by asking the following question:

Suppose you have got Rs. 1224 and you have to divide it equally among six people. How much would each person get?

This time the students argued,

The total amount of money is more than 1200. So each person will get at least 200. And the extra is 24 which when divided by six is 4. So each person will get Rs 204!

Laws of cancellation

Sandeep (fictional name) teaches pre-calculus in a class. In one of the assignments he asks the following question:The student answered 1. And gave the following explanation:

You cancel off 'x'. So you only have 'sin' left. Now you can take any value of sin. In particular, sin 90 = 1.

Sandeep of course did not give any points for that problem. The student came to ask why he has deducted marks when the answer is correct. And the student got a calculus book to show that the answer is correct. Then Sandeep tried to explain that the proof the student gave was not logical. The student asked,

Why does everything have to be logical?

Cube roots, Square roots and hands
One student went to his TA saying that she cannot solve "³√x = 2". The TA started to explain.

TA : You are given cube root of x is 2. You have to remove the cube root sign on the left. What would you do?
Student: I'll take cube roots on both the side.
TA: But you already have a cube root.
Student: I do not understand. Still I can take cube roots.
TA:(flabbergasted) Okay, let us first solve an easier problem: How would you solve, "√x = 2"?
Student: I'll take square root on both sides.
TA: But you already have square root on the left.
Student: Oh now I understand. I'll take cube root on both sides.
TA:(almost throwing in the towel) I think you are not getting the point. Let me take up a real life situation. Suppose you are wearing gloves and I want to see your nails, what would you do? Would you wear another pair of gloves?
Student: HOW DARE YOU WANT TO SEE MY NAILS! WHY SHOULD I SHOW MY NAILS TO YOU? (Gets angry and leaves the office)

What do I want to do with this blog?

For quite sometime I have been thinking writing something in my blog, but for a variety of reasons I simply could not do it. Well, first of all, being towards the end of my Ph.D. program, I am quite busy tying up the loose ends. Further, the nature of this blog itself is a bit too daring. I intend to expand on the last statement a bit.

Till now I was writing about things somehow related to mathematics. I tried to keep the stuff simple, still interesting. Somehow suddenly I started feeling a bit of a shortage of simple things to write in the blog. Most of the things are already there on the net; and most likely you do not have to go anywhere further than Wikipedia. Then I wonder, why should I waste time writing on things which are already well documented on the net. And specially when the other people are doing a good job, definitely a much better job than what I could have done alone.

For example, for the last few months I had been thinking for writing a blog on projective planes. I read a bit and then thought, "Okay, I need more interesting things if I have to write a popular article." I went on reading and then slowly it started getting technical. And by the time it got to some level of interest, I already was dwelling in open problems in the area. Then I decided to write a part of it. Before writing, I did a google search on those topics. There were so many articles dealing with exactly what I wanted to write about, I felt it is better that I do something else which will be more original.

Thus I decided to change the flavor of the blog.

This blog I'll keep to update about things happening around me. Of course, only those of academic interest. I may try my hand at writing about some nonacademic incidents also. But

Warning: I am very bad at narration. So read at your own risk! :-).