Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for September 09, 2024

Miss Wormwood clearly hasn’t taught the Pythagorean theorem well enough.

5 out of 4 people struggle with math…..

The teacher would give credit for the creativity

Now I know where common core came from.

Count it out on your fingers.

Hobbes is more knowledged in algebra and geometry, not basic math.

I thought you had to multiply them?

That’s a new math, all right…

Same reason I flunked Algebra

OK, Hobbes—explain the Pythagorean Theory!

I told my algebra teacher that I didn’t understand algebra at all. I didn’t understand math with letters rather than numbers and I didn’t know what “X” was. He told me that “X” could be anything. I said that if that was true why did he mark my answer wrong. He sighed and shook his head while he walked off. Even the teacher didn’t have an answer to my question.

Sounds like “Bistro Math” from the “Hitch-Hikers guide to the Galaxy”

Bistromathics itself is simply a revolutionary new way of understanding the behaviour of numbers. Just as Einstein observed that time was not an absolute but depended on the observer’s movement in space, and that space was not an absolute, but depended on the observer’s movement in time, it is now realised that numbers are not absolute, but depended on the observer’s movement in restaurants.

The first non-absolute number is the number of people for whom the table is reserved. This will vary during the course of the first three telephone calls to the restaurant, and then bear no apparent relation to the number of people who actually turn up, or to the number of people who subsequently join them after the show/match/party/gig, or to the number of people who leave when they see who else has turned up. The second non-absolute number is the given time of arrival, which is now known to be one of those most bizarre of the mathematical concepts, a recipriversexcluson, a number whose existence can only be defined as being anything, other than itself. In other words, the given time of arrival is the one moment of time at which it is impossible that any member of the party will arrive.

Recipriversexclusons now play a vital part in many branches of math, including statistics and accountancy and also form the basic equations used to engineer the Somebody Else’s Problem field. The third and most mysterious piece of non-absoluteness of all lies in the relationship between the number of items on the check, the cost of each item, the number of people at the table and what they are each prepared to pay for. (The number of people who actually brought any money is only a sub-phenomenon in this field.) The baffling discrepancies that used to occur at this point remained uninvestigated for centuries simply because no one took them seriously. They were at the time put down to such things as politeness, rudeness, mea

They were at the time put down to such things as politeness, rudeness, meanness, flashiness, tiredness, emotionality or the lateness of the hour, and completely forgotten about on the following morning. They were never tested under laboratory conditions, of course, because they never occurred in laboratories – not in reputable laboratories at least.

And so it was only with the advent of pocket computers that the startling truth became finally apparent, and it was this: Numbers written on restaurant checks within the confines of restaurants do not follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces of paper in any other parts of the Universe. This single statement took the scientific world by storm. It completely revolutionised it. So many mathematical conferences got held in such good restaurants that many of the finest minds of a generation died of obesity and heart failure and the science of math was put back by years. Slowly, however, the implications of the idea began to be understood. To begin with it had been too stark, too crazy, too much like what the man in the street would have said “Oh, yes, I could have told you that.” Then some phrases like “Interactive Subjectivity Frameworks” were invented, and everybody was able to relax and get on with it.

I am glad Hobbes is there to help Calvin.

Talk about the blind leading the visually impaired…

This is the beginning of the story arc which will include the first ever mention of the Noodle Incident.

This was always an unusual strip, in that it focuses on making Hobbes look ridiculous.

Use yours fingers kid. There ten of em.

I think Hobbes could get a job at NASA or at least Boeing.

Hobbes was almost there, if he answered it 3 squared he would have gotten out of home work for the whole year.

Are Calvin and the cat working in a government office

GAH!! It’s 9! You should know this stuff by now!

A square with sides of different lengths. That makes sense.

6 + 3 = 6.7 according to Hobbes.

This is the same kid with an immense vocabulary and grasp of philosophical concepts.

This is where Hobbes’ stuffed animal brain comes into play.

All seems logical to me. Where’s the joke?

Tiger math is different from human math.

Yep…..gonna make it work!!!!!

“Y as in y do we care” That’s great!

Given that Hobbes lives only in Calvin’s imagination, he should have mentioned imaginary numbers!!

Dad and at least one CPA tried to teach me the Times Tables before giving up. Mom ,a school teacher, never even tried

Listening to Hobbes’s explanations of how to solve the problem is like peering into to Calvin’s brain, watching a Rube Goldberg machine in action.

How much is 6 + 3?

Accountant: 9

Carpenter: eight and 63/64th of an inch.

Engineer: (fiddling with his slide rule): 8.999

Lawyer: How much do you want it to be.

Arizona Republican: Some say it’s 9 but we’re still recounting.

Florida Educator: That’s woke math.

Miss Wormwood gave up on ‘show me your work’ requirement. It caused excessive character development with Calvin and herself. In her case, the excessive character development was found in the bottom of a bottle of booze.

LOL… Tiger Math is complicated.

Oh, come on! It’s obviously 63!

I wish I had had Hobbes as my teacher. My math teacher started with the Peano axioms.

My daughter did well on Algebra tests. It asked Can you Solve for X? Her answer was No, I cannot. That was correct for her.

Calvin, you take the square root of the hippopotamus and divide by 36 to get the answer.

All the comic strip boys are having math issues today.

When my son struggled with math, I had him use manipulatives—small blocks that students can move around to work out basic math. His math skills soared because the abstract concepts became real to him.

Y is indeed a square number. (Even though I know Hobbes is full of it here, he’s selling his BS so well that I’m desperately trying to make sense of it.)

Well, the answer is a square number.

Go ask Susie and Mr Bun.

I’m sharing an old classic!

There are 10 types of people who has an opinion about this comic – the ones who like it, and the ones who dislike it.

If your IQ divided by your age is less than (0) then the answer is the square root of 81.

One of the best Calvin and Hobbes, and that’s saying a lot.

But one side of the square is 3 and 3-squared is 9. See how easy it is?

Wow! They sure lost me!

If it doesn’t make sense just make a bigger square! Or shift the goal posts ..

Well, good luck with your career driving for Uber, they love having people that work for them that can’t do math ! ;-)

Interesting that Hobbes could also derive the correct answer from what he was doing. The area of the square would have been 18. then bisecting it would have equaled nine.

There are three types of people in the world; those that can count and those that can’t.

This sounds like the common core solution to math problems

reading this during a math class and trying to keep the laugh in

Has to be the new math

I didn’t have any trouble with arithmetic but I never checked my work so I often got wrong answers.

If his measurement of the diagonal is under 2, he doesn’t know how to use a ruler either.

Oh come on people Y = 6.7

What Hobbs lacks in math ability, he makes up in creativity.

Come again, Hobbes?

Indeed, I remember how difficult “higher math” was starting in high school.