Frazz by Jef Mallett for December 10, 2024

Train wrecks are mesmerizing

Oh, I can’t wait!

Wasn’t the point to not be about trains?

I can’t wait to read Caulfield’s story problem!

How massive is Jim’s post Erie ore?

Skip the trains. Instead, have tour busses from popular artists going in opposite directions in the middle of the night between concerts.

Where Dr. Spaetzle?

The worm has officially turned.

Never ask someone to do something for you unless you are prepared for them to say no. Or even worse, to say yes.

Mallett has gone off the rails.

Mrs. Olson walked right into that one. But Caulfield is very creative so this should be interesting.

Encourage precocious with a portion of precaution.

Using trains was old-fashioned when I was in school, a couple centuries ago. When I taught physics, I used more exciting examples. "Lois Lane has just been pushed off the roof of the Daily Planet building, which is 550 meters tall. Superman arrives 0.75 seconds after she starts her plummet. His maximum acceleration is 12g [and the student is expected to have memorized the fact that 1g of acceleration is 9.8 m/s2 (⬅︎ that “2” is an exponent). Will he be able to save his girl friend in time? (You can tell this is an old test: Superman isn’t married yet).

If you take a three hour train trip on Thanksgiving, how long will it take?

Moving right along . . .

Yes, she should have seen that coming.

Be very afraid.

Since when has this kid waited to be asked before proving that he’s smarter than everyone else?

The first chapter of our textbook for Advanced Accounting was about 75 pages long, followed by 35 pages of word problems!

Uber surge pricing word problem belongs on the GRE, not fifth grade

One of the ways to really learn about something is to try to teach it to others.

It will be really interesting to see what Caulfield comes up with.

Bob lives on the bus route halfway between the gals he’s been courting, Alice and Clara. He doesn’t want to be playing favorites, so he leaves it up to chance: Every night at some random time after supper he wanders down to the bus stop and just takes the first bus that comes along and drops in on whichever lady is in that direction. Northbound busses stop there every half-hour, and so do southbound busses. But eventually Clara gets disgusted with Bob because he’s spending 5 times as much time with Alice as with her. Why is that?

This sounds like one of Mrs. Olsen’s tricks to make Caulfield actually do work.

She not only walked into that one, she fell in lol

If I were to teach math again, I’d make writing word problems part of the curriculum.