Fraction Fiascos and Decimal Debacles
I just got my final score for Calculus back and I'd like to take this opportunity to thank my best math teacher. No, not any person living or deceased or even the good folks at Texas Instruments, but a computer game. I can't help but wonder if I would have made it this far without a game from my childhood called Number Munchers. Unlike prudish, faux-educational games such as Reader Rabbit, my mathematical maestro was a handsome little green creature whose jaw opened and closed with the ease of a presidential candidate. For those sorry individuals that have not known NM, it is a very simple computer game set up with a grid filled with numbers. Some are random while others fit a common pattern such as multiples of 3 and factors of 12. It is your devine mission to "eat" the numbers that fit the pattern. If you take too long, "troggles" appear on the screen and will munch their way to eat anything in their gluttonous paths. I remember screaming "Oh no! Another Troggle!" with a mixture of apprehension and glee. Now it's more like, "Hey Troglodyte, that's my prime, bitch". I believet the greatest appeal was getting on that HALL OF FAME so that all the other kids in computer lab could see what a math badass I was. Status symbols were different back in the day. Those kids would swim the Atlantic Ocean, blindfolded if necessary, if that's what it took to get into the Hall of Fame.
If I was motivated by impending troglodytes in all of my studies, I would be unstoppable.
If I was motivated by impending troglodytes in all of my studies, I would be unstoppable.