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These 30 Memes May Help You Get Through Another Day Of Doing Math
Interview With Expert
Math sometimes gets a bad rap. Traditionally, it’s not the most well-liked subject in school. Students often complain that it’s difficult to understand. In fact, in a 2023 survey, math ranked only above foreign languages as a subject in terms of people’s favorite. 59% of respondents said they liked or loved math when they were in high school.
Perhaps some of these math lovers are now fans of the Meme For Mathematicians Facebook page. It’s the perfect place to go to have a chuckle or two if you’re a professional mathematician or just an average fan of crunching numbers.
Bored Panda reached out to Ben Orlin, the creative mind behind Math with Bad Drawings. We asked Ben why math should be important to everyone and what the best ways to learn and teach it are. Read our conversation with him below!
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#1
Tiffany Sauter 1 year ago
If only all arguments could have a mathematical solution we can agree on.
Asaf Rokni 1 year ago
They can, if people stick to facts rather than thoughts...
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#2
Aballi 1 year ago
I got myself that shirt when I was tutoring stats. It was interesting to see who understood it and chuckled vs who asked why it was missing the definition of the second type of person!
Regina Holt 1 year ago
I have this shirt also! I would silently judge people by the look on their face.
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#3
Virgil Blue 1 year ago
In popular fan lore the head to the left is the aggressive one, the middle one the stern leader type and the right one is like a small kid and called Kevin. There are lots of fun fan comics about them too. All this because in the original costume that head didn't articulate quite like the others giving him his derpy personality.
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The 'Meme for Mathematicians' page has around 250k followers and has been entertaining math enthusiasts since 2020. And it's not just a Facebook page; they're on Instagram, too. Their X (Twitter) page, however, goes in a bit of a different direction. Titled RoughHistory, it's a place for interesting historical pictures, coupled with the occasional funny memes and videos.
We might think that not many people go on to study mathematics, but in 2020, about 1.9 million students got their bachelor's degrees in mathematics. The 2018 Cambridge International Global Education Census actually found that mathematics was the most popular subject among students.
#4
karen snyder 1 year ago
Reality check: Max Planck was born in 1858. So, these pictures are taken at age 20 and again at age 43. I want y'all to do a side by side comparison of yourself or a parent, or even a favorite celebrity, at those ages. This is physics in the sense of, "what 20 years of being alive does to a man."
#5
#6
michael Chock 1 year ago (edited)
But if you stack them when you count them, you get 2+2=1. If all 4 together =1 whole, then you need to rewrite the problem 2(1/4) + 2(1/4) = 1 OR 4(1/4). Like measuring anything, you can't forget to carry the units.
michael Chock 1 year ago
Also, 2 pennies plus 3 pennies = 5 pennies or 1 nickel or 1/2 a dime or 1/5 of a quarter or 1/10 of a half dollar. So 2+3= 6.53
To learn more about the wonderful world of mathematics, we reached out to Ben Orlin. He's the author of four books about mathematics: Math with Bad Drawings, Change is the Only Constant, Math Games with Bad Drawings, and Math for English Majors which came out this year. He presents the many practical and wonderful ways in which math shapes our world. And he does that through the medium of stick figure cartoons.
Ben is a Yale graduate in mathematics and grew up in a very mathematical world. His dad is a math professor at MIT, his sister is a math teacher as well, and his wife is a research mathematician. But Ben decided to become a teacher of mathematics in quite an unconventional, less academic way.
#7
Virgil Blue 1 year ago
I once heard a flatearther talk about how the sun expels kaytions. He was quite angry when his scientist discussion partner pointed out he pronounced cat-ions wrong.
#8
Nic Behpens 1 year ago
I am one to believe that Tuesday is the worst weekday. Mondays suck because the weekend but sometimes it's 3 day weekend. Wednesday day is half way through. Thursday is tomorrow's Friday. Friday is tomorrow is the weekend but sometimes it's a 3 day weekend. But Tuesday can only say at least I'm not this guy who is apart of the 3 day weekend.
"Math is gorgeous and bizarre," Ben tells us when we ask him why math is important for everyone to know. "It gives us fractal coastlines, logical paradoxes, infinities nested like matryoshka dolls, perfect wheels that aren't circles, and curves that somehow have a sharp corner at every single point."
"At its best, math will blow your mind into little pieces, and then stitch those pieces back together into a whole new mind that better appreciates the weirdness of our universe."
#11
michael Chock 1 year ago
Speed is relative. Unfortunately both your speedometer and a radar work on the same plane of relativity.
#12
As a teacher, Ben knows a thing or two about how hard the subject can be for some students. Sometimes, it's not just about maths being hard; some students can find it outright boring. He says the first thing teachers should do is establish a connection. "You've got to know your students," he says. "There's no teaching without relationships."
#13
Justin Tyme 1 year ago
So, what about it? Zero is not any less significant or useful than any other number.
#14
LittleTeapot 1 year ago (edited)
My weird brain: why’s they show “sheep X sheep” and not two sheep f*ing? Multiply! I guess that’d make “sheep / sheep” pretty weird though…
#15
arthbach 1 year ago
In school, my physics teacher was explaining something to the class, I remarked that we'd covered this is maths the year before. He wandered over to my desk, and privately remarked that physics is just applied maths, but most students haven't worked it out, and that normally the topics we cover in physics will be around 12-18 months behind the maths we have learned. This seemed a very logic explanation.
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However, just because math is hard, that shouldn't deter teachers from giving students more demanding problems to solve. Pushing students just the right amount might make them fans of mathematics. "Give them problems that are welcoming but challenging," Ben told Bored Panda. "Math won't always feel easy – but it should feel approachable."
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#18
"Third, honor their thinking," Ben goes on. "Math is meant to sculpt our powers of logic, calculation, and reason – and to do that, you've got to appreciate the beauty of the raw material, all the fabulous intuitions and insights that students already have."
"Then, if all else fails, slap some dollar signs in front of the numbers," Ben recommends. "'Negative four' doesn't always capture the imagination. 'You owe me four bucks' always does."
#19
Jrog 1 year ago
Except 1) it never happened and 2) hot catalytic converters in gas-powered engine are a common source of ignition in bush fires. https://tceq.texas.gov/airquality/mobilesource/vetech/catfire.html
Forrest Hobbs 1 year ago
Electrical cars are less likely to catch fire than fossil fuel powered cars (including diesels), but you see, this is a joke. Solar powered cars these days almost all have batteries (to deal with sunshine not necessarily being available) and lithium batteries are really nasty when they do catch fire - and that's the source of the joke.
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#21
Robert Benson 1 year ago
Love isn't a force... According to Huey Lewis and the News, Love is a power, completely different units.
Toothless Feline 1 year ago
I disagree—I believe that serendipity is the strongest force on earth. (Serendipity is the things you find that you’re not looking for.)
There are many different branches of math: algebra, trigonometry, calculus, statistics, geometry, etc. But Ben Orlin finds probability the most fascinating. "My first book had chapters on lottery tickets, financial meltdowns, and human genetics. It's bizarre that the same simple mathematics applies to all of these things. Plus, probability gives us simple problems whose solutions are totally counterintuitive."
#23
Trophy Husband 1 year ago
I'm a former engineer and astronomer and I remember it as 3.14159. almost no one needs more than that.
Minttu Kuusela 9 months ago
what I remember in my head: 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419736939937519582097494459230 all because my mom promised me an ice cream for memorizng that when i was like 8.
Forrest Hobbs 1 year ago
NASA uses 3.141592653589793 for high precision long range navigation. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/news/2016/3/16/how-many-decimals-of-pi-do-we-really-need/
#24
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 1 year ago
dx generally does NOT equal d times x. It's the derivative of x.
michael Chock 1 year ago
The rate any constant grows is always 1. It is 1 of itself now and forever.
"We sometimes call them 'paradoxes,'" Orlin goes on. "For example, the birthday paradox. But all they are is straightforward calculations that happen to shatter our expectations. In a room of just 23 people, it's likelier than not that two people share a birthday. Weird, but true."
#25
#26
Scott Rackley 1 year ago
Nah. Philosophy is people who don't understand math trying to put words to it.
Andi 1 year ago
try applying mathematical methods to morality coz that always goes well!
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Doing math is good for us and our brains. A Stanford University study shows that students who are good at math are also better at decision-making and retaining visual attention. You might've been thinking in school that you'll never need to use the Pythagorean Theorem, but learning math at school isn't really about that.
#28
#29
StarCrossedFriday 1 year ago
Okay, half of these are lost on me - I studied languages for a reason 😅
Scott Rackley 1 year ago
Let me try. The first statement says that the empty set is an element of the set that contains the empty set, which of course is true. The second statement says that the empty set is an element of the set OF the empty set, which is false. Yeah, set theory throws up some weird looking stuff.
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Doing math consistently fosters our neuroplasticity, or, as Neil DeGrasse Tyson put it, 'A new kind of brain wiring,' one that makes us better at problem-solving. It's not about the facts and the formulas that we learn, but about what methods, tools, and tactics we've had to develop to solve those mathematical problems.
#31
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 1 year ago
Took me a second. Wave particle duality. The double slit experiment.
#33
#36
Anonymouse 1 year ago
Okay, who else thought "hole in one" at first and sat there trying to figure out what golf had to do with this? (Btw if ppl want to know, the joke is that there's a hole at 1, meaning it's literally "no one"; for "absolutely no one" there's nothing below 0, which is what absolute value of numbers causes)
#37
BeesEelsAndPups 1 year ago
My uncle was a civil engineer and mother was a doctor. He liked to say, "when you make a mistake somebody dies, when I make a mistake a LOT of people die"
#39
Skara Brae 1 year ago
On the second one, divide top and bottom by the square root of two to get the first one.
#43
BeesEelsAndPups 1 year ago
No, LaTeX is dumb. I don't understand why people insist on using it.
Talis 1 year ago
Excellent formula support. Excellent template definitions for various publications. No layout oopsies. Available for many platforms. Excellent cross-platform support. And more...
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#48
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 1 year ago
Stats wasn't that hard for me. It was way easier than integral calculus.
Science Nerd 1 year ago
I was once tortured for a semester with a 2 hour stats class starting at 8 a.m. I understand the face.
#50
Say No to Downvoting 1 year ago
I just tried it on my phone’s calculator and it took my 4 goes just the enter the numbers in correctly…clearly I’m out of my depth, here.
#51
Science Nerd 1 year ago
Superposition of an infinite number of emotional states?
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StarCrossedFriday 1 year ago (edited)
This is like that magic trick anyone can do - watch me shuffle these cards into an order that has (most likely) never been seen before! Tadaaaa!
Ale Fab 1 year ago
Thank you, I've been saying it for years: "wanna quit the lottery? .. before you buy a ticket, convince yourself to bet on 1 2 3 4 5 6."
Bob Brooce 1 year ago
Playing 1,2,3,4,5,6 absolutely guarantees that you won't win the advertised jackpot. Those numbers are just as likely to be drawn as any other set if numbers, but if it happens you'll be sharing the jackpot with thousands of other people.
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#59
Rick Seiden 1 year ago
Alan Turing. He and his team shortened WWII and saved countless lives. In return, the persecuted him for being gay, gave him a choice between jail and chemical castration, and when he chose the latter, it depressed him so much he unalived himself.
bas vdlaar 1 year ago
It was the biggest lack of civilisation in our time.
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#65
Ali H M Salehuddin 1 year ago
Enter 2 + 3, press execute. Then use back arrow to change 3 to 2. Viola.
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#67
Ali H M Salehuddin 1 year ago
You can extend this.. Sqrt(1234567899987654321) = 1111111111; Sqrt(123456789989987654321) = 11111111111; Sqrt(12345678998789987654321) = 111111111111 Sqrt(1234567899876789987654321) = 1111111111111 and so on.
StarCrossedFriday 1 year ago
I can’t help but love patterns like this, even though I’m truly shite at maths.
#70
#73
#74
StarCrossedFriday 1 year ago
Either there’s a very clever link between this text and this image, or I’m even more lost than I already was.
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What do you think ?
William Lee Jackson 1 year ago
No that is Incorrect three to the second power is 9 Because 3*3 =9
Rafael 1 year ago
I was scammed by works01 through work69, but I'm certain this one will do the trick
Load More Replies... William Lee Jackson 1 year ago
No that is Incorrect three to the second power is 9 Because 3*3 =9
Rafael 1 year ago
I was scammed by works01 through work69, but I'm certain this one will do the trick
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