Anecdotally or statistically, an unhealthy number of mathematicians and math educators around the globe are chain-smokers. Out of habit or addiction, they need to puff out before any proof.
Likewise, it wouldn’t be surprising that a (smaller) percentage of them would also need to drink before they derive any mathematical result, or prove or disprove any conjecture, which is worth gracing the pages of a reputable journal or periodical.
Strong Zero
On a visit to a local supermarket two years ago, I spotted Strong Zero, which led me to tweet about it:
Strong Zero: Something to reward yourself with at the end of a long fruitful day indulging in mathematical proof to destress yourself with fellow boozers.
Then, I had in mind to “derive, then drink,” rather than the other way around. The choice is yours! Know your limits!
If you drink, don’t derive! Really?
So, a little boozing and smoking (in moderation) might debatably be an unspoken (inexpensive?) boost or catalyst to experiencing an aha! When the product of two negatives produces a positive!
A Quickie from Russia
Since we’re on the topic of drinking alcoholic beverages or liquor to boost mathematical productivity, let’s end with a mathematical quickie from Putinland, which was pre-Xed (or tweeted) slightly less than a dozen years ago:
A man and his wife drink a keg of kvas in 10 days. He alone can drink it in 14 days. How long will his wife take to drink a keg?
Challenge: Try solving the above proportion problem in a nontraditional way (with or without a drink)! Better still, use a bar model to do it.
Remembering Prof. Calculus’s Inventions & Innovations
Meet Professor Cuthbert Calculus, a polymath—a geeky jack of all trades—who was at home in many disciplines ranging from astronautics and astrophysics to geometry and geodetics to mathematics and thermodynamics.
The beloved clumsy and eccentric professor, or the absent-minded mad scientist par excellence, applied his mathematical and scientific knowledge to launch his futuristic inventions and innovations.
A Tribute to Calculus
To celebrate Professor Calculus, who first appeared 80 years ago in Hergé’s 12th Tintin book, Red Rackham’s Treasure (1943), the recently published Professor Calculus: Science’s Forgotten Genius (2023) by Albert Algoud—the original French edition first came out in 1994—paid a funny tribute to one of the most endearing scientific geniuses in children’s literature.
Over the course of 54 years, Hergé (Georges Remi) who’s born in Brussels in 1907, completed over 20 titles in The Adventures of Tintin series, which is now considered to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, comics series of all time.
The Harry Potter Series of Yesteryear
More than 230 million copies of Tintin’s series have been sold, which proves that comic books have the same power to entertain children and adults in the 21st century as they did in the early 20th.
Tintin’s Series for Girls
Moons ago, when my daughters were in elementary or middle school, I introduced them to some Tintin’s titles. To my surprise, they’d quasi-zero interest in Tintin & Milou’s (or Snowy’s) stories, because they couldn’t relate to the male or chauvinistic, not to say, colonialist, characters.
Flipping through the pages, and taking a deeper look at Hergé’s characters, I realized that the girls weren’t wrong. The number of pages in each book depicting female characters is probably fewer than the fingers in a hand.
It’s no surprise that Hergé had been accused of sexism for the almost complete lack of female characters in his “boys books.” In fact, few people would disagree today that most (white) men from that era were racist, sexist, and misogynist.
Hergé himself denied being a misogynist, saying that “for me, women have nothing to do in a world like Tintin’s, which is the realm of male friendship.”
Tintin’s Gender
On a lighter note, Tintin himself has been labeled as being strongly feminized, especially in relation to Captain Haddock, with the hypothesis that he’s of virtually indeterminate gender.
More than half a dozen years ago, French philosopher Vincent Cespede made the headlines when he claimed that Tintin is “an androgynous redhead with blue eyes” and “presumably asexual.”
A Christmas Gift for Boys (and Girls?)
If you’ve a teenage son, grandson, or nephew, I think giving away a few Tintin’s titles would be an apt Christmas gift for them; however, for a daughter, granddaughter, or goddaughter, you’d probably want to think twice or thrice before prematurely exposing them to any of Hergé’s predominantly male white characters.
In today’s politicians’ slogan of inclusiveness or political correctness, I wonder whether The Adventures of Tintin series might even be banned in some feminist or woke circles. After all, if we recall that the Harry Potter series was not only banned from some school’s library after educators consulted with exorcists in the US and Rome, but also in some conservative Christian and radical Islamist circles.
The same could also be said for math classics like Edwin Abbott Abbott’s Flatland (1884), which directly or indirectly exposes social classes and white supremacy. Or titles like George Orwell’s 1984 that was banned in both Soviet Union and China.
The Calculus Affair
Tintin’s puzzle: How to rescue Prof. Calculus who’s in danger.
In The Calculus Affair, Tintin witnessed some very strange events like the simultaneous shattering of windows, mirrors, and chandeliers, leaving him bewildered. After a shooting and a break-in, Tintin knew Prof. Calculus was in danger, but he had only one clue—an unusual packet of cigarettes.
Could he solve the mystery before a terrible weapon fell into the wrong hands?Could he act in time to protect Professor Calculus?
Calculus’s brain. Fr: Albert Algoud’s Professor Calculus: Science’s Forgotten Genius (2023)
The Adventures of Tintin Series
If you’re a Tintin fan old and new, especially a lover of graphic novels, mysteries, and historical adventures, how many of the 20-odd titles of Hergé’s The Adventures of Tintin series have you read?
What’s your favorite Tintin’s title?
Tintin in the Land of the Soviets Aimed at communicating an anti-communist sentiment to the young reader? Banned in Ukraine?
Tintin in America Placed in a restricted access section of the Jones Library in Amherst, MA in 2014 for its “racist imagery.”
Cigars of the Pharaoh
The Blue Lotus Would Japanese nationalists call for its ban?
The Broken Ear
The Black Island
King Ottakar’s Sceptre
The Crab with the Golden Claws
The Shooting Star
The Secret of the Unicorn
Red Rackham’s Treasure First printed 80 years ago.
The Seven Crystal Balls
Prisoners of the Sun
Land of Black Gold
Destination Moon
Explorers of the Moon
The Calculus AffairA mathematician’s favorite?
The Red Sea Sharks
Tintin in TibetPraised by the Dalai Lama, who awarded it the Light of Truth Award. Banned in China?
The Castafiore Emerald
Flight 714 to Sydney
The Adventures of Tintin and the Picaros
Tintin and Alph-Art
Tintin in the CongoThe racist content: colonial attitude vis-à-vis Congolese people and for glorifying big-game hunting.
In my childhood days, I read most of Tintin’s titles in its original French, which is probably the language of choice to reading them, especially for those who’re bilingual, trilingual, or multilingual. I hope to reread the series in another language in my golden years.
Like math, calculus needn’t sulk (to any degree)! In the hands of an excited middle-school or high-school math teacher, or with access to some creatively written (or online free) resources, the ABCs of calculus can even be taught to elementary school kids.
Think of Mr. Jaime Escalante who had successfully taught calculus to cohorts of Mexican-American students. There is zero excuse why we can’t emulate him to teaching it to financially disadvantaged or minority groups.
What’s Calculus to You?
Do you parrot the textbook definition of calculus to your students? The mathematics of (instantaneous) change. Or do you share it as the branch of mathematics that measures “how far an object has been going fast,” and “how fast an object has gone far”?
Moons ago, I cheekily approached or indirectly defined calculus via the division of zero as follows:
0 ÷ 0: The Raison d’être of Calculus
With some dose of irreverence, the bête noire of high-school or college math could turn out to be a much beloved topic even among the so-called innumerates or mathematically challenged.
Calculus for the Numerati
It’s debatably said that without an exposure of some delta-epsilon calculus, no man or woman can honestly claim to be “mathematically educated” or “mathematically civilized.” Sounds like mathematical pride or arrogance, isn’t it?
Or just an example of “mathematical elitism” à la Trump for those fakes who declare themselves as being a “very stable genius.” Even Einstein had remarked that calculus was “the greatest advance in thought that a single individual was ever privileged to make.”
Fr: Ryan Truong on Facebook’s “Mathematical Mathematics Memes”
Recently, while working on the Urban Calculus manuscript, I forced myself to reread some of the out-of-print pop calculus titles like David Berlinski’s A Tour of the Calculus, Steven Strogatz’s The Calculus of Friendship, and Mary Stopes-Roe’s Mathematics with Love to get an intuitive feel of the subject again.
For a long time, the thought of taking up the challenge to read Newton’s The Principia (even its annotated version) frightens me, because the complexity of the content is beyond me. I’ve a good excuse not to borrow the thick copy from the university library unless I want to look like a “mathematical snob” carrying it around, or use it as a temporary doorstop.
When Comics and Calculus Converge
Calculus for All
Let’s play our part in sharing the mathematical gospel of Newton and Leibniz that calculus needn’t be a four-letter word—how these two mathematical greats had exorcized the demon out of the division of zero.
Why not strive to be the “James Escalante” of your school, state, or country? You’d be the changemaker or mathematical savior in motivating some undecided or mature students to read a calculus course or module in college?
A National University of Singapore’s brochure cover promoting math and art.
A fortnight ago, Center of Math (@centerofmath) tweeted the following picture:
Imagine if Donald Trump were your high school math teacher. How would he disruptively or irreverently use the above illustration to teach some “pop (or poop) calculus” to his math-anxious Liberal Arts students?
From Epstein to Trump
President Trump’s “fun buddy” of yesteryear, Jeffrey Epstein, was unverifiably a pretty good math teacher before he became a successful financier, whose sinful soul had since journeyed to that hot fiery place, on the other side of eternity, sooner than later.
And not too long ago the president who claimed to have a “genius IQ” boasted that his “favorite” daughter is very good at numbers, which indirectly implies that she must have inherited his (or his first wife’s) “mathematical gene.”
An e-card promoting the disruptive title, “If Trump Were Your Math Teacher” (2020).
A phrase that had made its way into Urban Dictionary, but had since mysteriously disappeared from cyberspace.
Trump’s Calculus
Based on the defined meanings of f(x), what could f′′′(x) represent?
