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The Newsletter >
On Cloud Quadratic
April 27, 2009
“How do you explain this?” Jennifer, my algebra tutor, exclaimed, her face a study in shock.
“Jennifer, I can’t explain the ‘A’s how am I going to explain the ‘F’?”
“You know what this looks like don’t you?”
I hung my head in embarrassment, and said, “I know.”
“It looks like you cheated your way through the whole semester!”
“Don’t worry. I didn’t cheat. I’m not that clever.”
She hung her head, and said, “I know.”
This is not to say that I have not learned a great deal of useful stuff during my semester in Algebra for Dummies. I now know how to reduce an entire eight-hundred-page intermediate algebra book to the confines of a three by five index card. We’re allowed to have notes for our tests, as long as they’re invisible. I didn’t even know how to use the reduce feature on the copy machine before this math class.
I now know that some numbers aren’t even real. Some numbers are fake or imaginary, just like unicorns or the United Nations. They’re all a great idea, but let’s face it (big whisper) they don’t really exist.
I have also discovered that I have a favorite algebraic equation and that every situation, problem, bad dream, wart remedy, and conflict can be expressed mathematically. My favorite algebraic equation represents the delightful dynamic of the “group project” and can be written thusly: 72xy + (-8/3pdq) (666xyz666) – whotheheckcares X upyours = 2.
There was a lot of group work associated with my being on the editorial board of my college literary magazine where Max (not his real name) tried to teach me how to cheat in algebra by using my cell phone. He stopped trying when I admitted that I didn’t know how to text message and that arthritis prevented me from being able to punch the numbers while the cell phone was in my sock.
The bottom line is that my teacher will drop my lowest test grade and replace it with my final test grade, provided that, I make anything higher than an F on my final. The final is cumulative. I have learned that cumulative is a word that means tested on everything we just learned, plus all the invisible stuff on those other three by five cards from all those other tests. Three by five cards full of algebra stuff that made you burst into tears—out loud and sniffling—in front of a class full of kids that know how to cheat by using their cell phones.
Linda (Factor This) Zern
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