Cat Lady and I were in DQ, minding our own business, when a (literal) clown approached us, and struck up a conversation. One of the things she said was that most normal people don't have a use for algebra on a daily basis. While this is generally quite true, I didn't have the heart to mention the irony that, just the other day, I actually had to ( Read more... )

I have literally six different blog posts rattling around in my head at the moment. Plus, my earlier post from '08 about latitude/longitude grids got me thinking.... I'm in the mood for a bit of juxtaposition of math and marketing, so that's what you're getting this evening ( Read more... )

What far more worrying here is not necessarily that someone stole millions, but that almost 16,000 people failed to notice anything odd going on with their money. I mean, we're not talking rounding error on a few percentage points; this is "$74k for actual operations; $3M for me". I don't expect every person in the town to know algebra, but ( Read more... )