Pi recently took a page from Singapore’s only ruling party’s decades-long successful template how to stay in power perpetually, with quasi-zero public protests, strikes, and riots.
Will Pi win her viral legal case against the World Health Organization (WHO)? Millions of math teachers worldwide are unspokenly hoping that the WHO won’t alienate or betray Pi, just as it did for the marginalized and unrecognized variant Xi.
Would Pi be vindicated for unfairly being discriminated by those who’re playing politics to prevent her from being admitted as a bona-fide corona variant worthy of WHO’s recognition?
Imagine how excited math educators globally would be if Pi won her legal case against the WHO.
Come Pi Day or Pi Approximation Day, if the 16th letter of the Greek alphabet were officially declared a WHO-approved variant by then, schools and universities would be electrified in conducting an eclectic mix of pi talks and lectures to promote Pi’s ambivalent “murderous” new status.
I, for one, have started to work on Murderous Pi—the title of a math e-book to celebrate Pi’s evolution from a humble mathematical constant to a proud corona variant, which would be plagued with devilish or wicked problems on mathematics’s most beloved irrational number.
Are you looking forward for Pi’s long-overdue recognition by WHO’s health professionals in the Lunar New Year of the Rabbit?
Until she’s virally credited for her fatally mixed impact on earthlings before she’d rest in peace to make way for Rho and Sigma, who’re lining up to be WHO-recognized, Pi’s rejection would be perceived as an irrational [mathematical & viral] injustice or betrayal, whose aftermath paranoiac behaviors among math educators and virologists worldwide could potentially be unpeaceful, to say the least.
Like the “infidel” Zero, who’s ostracized by the Church Fathers of yesteryear, may the “agnostic” or “devilish” Pi be vindicated as she longs to gain formal approval to be in the company of fellow corona variants.
While the world is anxiously waiting what “Christmas (or Cliff-mas!) gift” North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has reserved for President Trump, with the two rogue leaders now having revived their name-calling game, and as the world witnesses the impeachment trial of the Liar-in-Chief, how can math educators nevertheless use the caustic and divisive political climate in the US to spice their enrichment or recreational math lessons? How can they generate some mathematical positives from the many political and moral negatives?
A few Christmases ago, I wrote Christmaths: A Creative Problem Solving Math Book, which looks at some parallels between the king of public holidays and the queen of sciences. And now thanks to Donald Trump, his narcissistic, racist, and supremacist behaviors and tweets continue to provide thousands of math teachers worldwide fertile fodder to link math to politics.
The Mathematics of Trump
For many of us living outside the US, who are agnostic about the political views of both Democrat and Republican politicians, it’s hard not to poke fun at American [Trump?] politics.
Below are a sample of published entries, which irreverently looks at some parallelisms between Trump and Math.
Meet the Pinocchio-in-Chief
From Trumpworthy Math, I went on to define two units for measuring falsehood: tru and Pinocchio.
Pinocchio
A unit for measuring how far or how much a politician, dictator, or businessperson is lying to an oft-gullible public—named after a marionette with a long nose, the picture of a dishonest person.
Trump’s denial of having sex with an adult entertainer, while his wife was still pregnant, is at least six Pinocchios.
by MathPlus October 31, 2018
Lies, White Lies, and Statistics
True or False
(a) Politifact: “76 percent of Trump’s statements were false or mostly false.”
(b) Politico: “Trump told a lie every three minutes and fifteen seconds.”
What is a Trump Number?
Below is one of the two published definitions of a “Trump Number,” which had evaded me for some time, because I just couldn’t nail down a description, without too much falsehood or exaggeration.
Based on your knowledge or readings about Donald Trump, how would you define a “Trump Number”?
The “C” Word Among Atheists and Islamists
Two Christmases ago, when President Trump boasted how he restored the spirit of Christmas among those who worship the King of kings, I coined War on Christmas.
War on Christmas
When conservatives and President Trump have had enough of the political correctness by Democrats that people should say “Happy Holidays” and not “Merry Christmas.”
President Trump is hell-bent on winning the war on Christmas, who bragged that under him Americans can now freely and proudly say “Merry Christmas”—they shouldn’t be hijacked by atheists and Islamists in sharing Christmas greetings to others.
by MathPlus December 25, 2017
And last Christmas, I christened the following:
Trumpmas
The name Donald Trump would have Christened Christmas if he could have his way—after all, every day, the media unfailingly have something un-Christian to write about him, since he miraculously became the US President.
Those working under him long for the day when Trumpmas would turn into Christmas—probably they’ve to wait until they resign or get fired by the president.
by MathPlus December 23, 2018
The Existence or Nonexistence of Santa Claus
Following the Christmas phone call between the US President and a lucky child last year, I coined the following:
And that presidential “child-unfriendly” phone call prompted me to pose the following Christmaths question:
Santa’s Proof
Santa Claus (🎅): “Children don’t exist.”
Prove or disprove whether Father Santa is correct or not.
Wrapping a Christmas Present à la Trump 🌲🎉🎊🎄
On November 13, 2017, I tweeted the following:
“Nothing” for Christmas
The Gift of Nothing: When you go shopping and could find nothing to buy as a gift for your best friend or loved ones, why not give them the gift of nothing, because nothing is not for sale? Put nothing in a big box and give it to them. #nothing #zero #gift
Last Christmas Eve, I coined Trumpgifting:
Immoral Math: Quid-Pro-Quo Math, Barr Math, and Mueller Math
With some exaggeration and irreverence, it’s not too difficult to coin some mathematical words or phrases based on how President Trump and his oft-ethically challenged administration misrule the country.
Green Math: Trump’s Climate Hoax
With Donald Trump dumping the Paris Agreement for his personal political agenda, math and science teachers could play their part in educating students about the long-term consequences of the president’s selfish unscientific decision.
Fake Father Christmas
On April 13, 2019, I tweeted the following:
Fake Christmas: What are the odds that President Trump’s hypothesis that global climate change is a hoax could speed up the first Christmas summer in the US or EU? Or when fake Xmas trees permeate the homes? #Christmas #Christmaths #weather #climate #Singapore #math #humor 🌲🔢
The Sharpie Pen and Christmas Cards 🎅 🎄 ✉️
Guesstimate how many Christmas cards (and their envelopes) you can use with a Sharpie pen.
Estimate how long a line you can draw with a Sharpie pen.
If each person sent an average of 30 Christmas cards, how long would the Sharpie pen last them? Three years?
Trump’s Greetings Cards
Last December, to resurrect the lost art of sending Christmas or greetings cards, I coined the following slogan:
Make America Greet Again
Bringing back printed greeting cards as in the good old days before the advent of e-cards —when sending personalized cards meant so much to both senders and receivers.
This festive season, Trump supporters want their president to pass an executive order to ban those working in the US government to send e-cards, as this virtual way of greetings is “robotic” and “dehumanizing”—they want to make America greet again.
by MathPlus December 02, 2018
Guesstimate how many millions of greetings cards would be sent every year in the United States if President Trump were to pass his executive order on banning Christmas e-cards.
BC & AD: Restoring Year Zero
Discuss the social, economic, and political implications if the world were to switch to a “Trumpian calendar.”
Pi Exposition
One way for math educators to poke fun at the disturbingly obscene number of ethically challenged senators in exposing their moral hypocrisy to condone or defend the wrongs of a morally bankrupt president is through the irrational and transcendental number pi.
Or, even evangelical Trump supporters voters who refused to acknowledge or right his moral and political wrongs shouldn’t be let off the hook for condoning or exonerating the sins of a “statistical president.”
Prove that the biblical value of pi, as mentioned in 1 Kings 7:23 and 2 Chronicles 4:2, is 3.
The Aftermath of Christmas
Estimate how many people each year suffer food poisoning after eating Christmas leftovers. About half a million?
Roughly how many unhappy people return their unwanted Christmas presents on Boxing Day (and come home with discounted items)?
A Christmas Gift for Trump
Let me end with two Trump-friendly entries I submitted two months ago:
For the majority of us who aren’t born or blessed with a mathematical or symbol-minded brain, but nevertheless appreciate the austere beauty of mathematics, writing about mathematics and math education is the second best thing we’d do to console ourselves that we needn’t be first-rate mathematicians to enjoy the language of science and technology, or to appreciate the science of patterns.
Some mathematicians write novels under a pseudonym to avoid any suspicion from their faculty bosses; others compose limericks and haikus as a creative outlet to showcase their hidden poetic talents. And for the rest of us who are neither novelists nor poets, maybe submitting some definitions to Urban Dictionary, by coining new mathematical words, or redefining old ones, could be the first step to activating that atrophied right part of our brain, which is allegedly responsible for creativity.
On this Pi Day, let me share with fellow math educators eleven approved definitions related to the irrational and transcendental pi. Don’t ask me how many times I got rejected and needed to resubmit some of these definitions again, before the Urban Dictionary editors decided to approve them.
Pre-Pi Day
Pre-Pi Day seems to have been serially downvoted and subsequently deleted to prevent digital abuse, because the approved entry can no longer be accessed.
Rejection isn’t failure. We keep refining or redefining any rejected definitions until the editors have zero excuses to reject the resubmitted entries. I wished I’d share some recipe for these approved pi definitions, but any attempt to offer some tips to increase a math educator’s chances of getting these math words or terms approved would probably be futile, to say the least.
Over time, although I’ve managed to reduce the odds of rejection, however, some submissions inevitably end up in the little red book of the mean editors—maybe these word doctors had a bad day, or simply because I was submitting some “mathematical crap” that caused me to receive emails like the following:
Urban Dictionary – Pi-rated was not published
Thanks for your definition of Pi-rated!
A few volunteer editors read your definition and decided to not publish it. Don’t take it personally!
Pi-rated The term to describe any faux facts about the irrational number pi.
On Pi Day, our teacher tricked us with some pi-rated math: pi is a rational number (22/7); pi has a different value on the moon that on earth; pi has a value of three in the Bible.
It’s never too late to be mathematically playful, by playing your part in submitting some irreverent mathematical definitions to enliven your math lessons.
Thousands of students around the world celebrate Pi Day today, but local math students in Singapore can only dream of being part of this annual mathematical event. Singapore math students, teachers, and parents don’t (and can’t) celebrate Pi Day, as long as they officially follow the British style of writing their dates (DD/MM/YY).
What makes matters worse is that this year, Pi Day falls on the first day of the one-week school break, which makes it almost impossible for hardcore math teachers, who want to buck the calendrical trend, to get their students excited about the properties and beauties of the number Pi.
Until Singapore switches to the American style of writing dates (MM/DD/YY), which may not happen, at least during my lifetime, however, this shouldn’t prevent us from evangelizing the gospel of Pi among the local student population.
Here are seven e-gifts of the holy Pi, which I started musing about 314 minutes ago on this Pi Day.
Math educators, especially stressed [often self-inflicted] local teachers in Singapore, are always on the look-out for something funny or humorous to spice up their oft-boring math lessons. At least, this is the general feeling I get when I meet up with fellow teachers, who seem to be short of fertile resources; however, most are dead serious to do whatever it takes to make their teaching lessons fun and memorable.
It’s often said that local Singapore math teachers are the world’s most hardworking (and arguably the world’s “most qualified” as well)—apparently, they teach the most number of hours, as compared with their peers in other countries—but for the majority of them, their drill-and-kill lessons are boring like a piece of wood. It’s as if the part of their brain responsible for creativity and fun had long been atrophied. A large number of them look like their enthusiasm for the subject have extinguished decades ago, and teaching math until their last paycheck seems like a decent job to paying the mortgages and to pampering themselves with one or two dear overseas trips every other year with their loved ones.
Indeed, Singapore math has never been known to be interesting, fun, or creative, at least this is the canned perception of thousands of local math teachers and tutors—they just want to over-prepare their students to be exam-smart and to score well. The task of educating their students to love or appreciate the beauty and power of the subject is often relegated to outsiders (enrichment and olympiad math trainers), who supposedly have more time to enrich their students with their extra-mathematical activities.
A prisoner of war in World War II, Sidney Harris is one of the few artists who seems to have got a good grasp of math and science. While school math may not be funny, math needn’t be serious for the rest of us, who may not tell the difference between mathematical writing and mathematics writing, or between ratio and proportion. Let Sidney Harris show you why a lot of things about serious math are dead funny. Mathematicians tend to take themselves very seriously, which is itself a funny thing, but S. Harris shows us through his cartoons how these symbol-minded men and women are a funny awful lot.
Angel: “I’m beginning to understand eternity, but infinity is still beyond me.”
Mathematical humor is a serious (and dangerous) business, which few want to invest their time in, because it often requires an indecent number of man- or woman-hours to put their grey matter to work in order to produce something even half-decently original or creative. The choice is yours: mediocrity or creativity?
Humorously and irreverently yours
References
Adams, D. S. (2014). Lab math. New York: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press.
Harris, S. (1970). What’s so funny about science? Los Altos, Ca.: Wm. Kaufmann, Inc.
Check out an inexpensive (but risky) way to make a Singapore math lesson less boring: The Use of Humor in Mathematics. The author would be glad to visit local schools and tuition centers to conduct in-service three-hour math courses for fellow primary and secondary math teachers, who long to bring some humor to their everyday mathematical classrooms—as part of their annual 100 hours professional upgrading. Please use his e-mail coordinates on the Contact page.
A rectangular enclosure is 30 meters wide and 50 meters long. Calculate its area in square meters.
Solution
The My Pals Are Here Math Series
The My Pals Are Here series has been rumored to have been edited and ghostwritten by a hundred odd editors and freelancers in the last decade.
Lack of mathematical rigor was initially targeted against Dr. Fong Ho Kheong and his two co-authors by American profs in the first or/and second editions —probably by those who were “ghost advisors or consultants” for Everyday Math.
Deconstructing the Singapore Model Method
1. It’s a problem-solving strategy—a subset of the “Draw a diagram” strategy.
2. It’s a hybrid of China’s line method and Russia’s box (or US’s bar) method.
3. It’s the “Draw a diagram” strategy, which has attained a brand status in mathematics education circles.
4. It’s a problem-solving method that isn’t recommended for visually challenged or impaired learners.
5. It allows questions traditionally set at higher grades (using algebra) to be posed at lower grades (using bars).
Painless Singapore Math
Perhaps that’s how we’d promote Singapore math to an often-mathophobic audience!
A Singapore Ex-Minister’s Math Book
Dr. Yeo had the handwriting below depicted in his recreational math book, regarding his two granddaughters, Rebecca and Kathryn.
Composing some Theomatics-related haikus may prove therapeutic for stressful math educators, who are prone to overusing their left part of the brain. Why not let these 17-syllabled verses reactivate some atrophied part of your grey matter? Who knows? This right-brained activity may indirectly help rekindle your mathematical creativity!
The Trinity
The True Living God
Ever Three and ever One
A mystery, indeed!
Christ And Mathematics Education (C.A.M.E)
Come to worship Him
Christ and math education
Join ACMS
Theomatics,Anyone?
Teach math Christianly
As an act of true worship
It sure honors Him
Two Conference Proceedings of the Association of Christians in the Mathematical Sciences (ACMS)
Pi in the Sky
The Biblical pi
Is a rational number
From the Book of Kings
π = 3.14 and John 3:16
So close, yet so far
Rational and eternal
The union is null.
The X-tian Pi
The true Christian life
Is like the contextual pi
Constantly changing
© Sidney Harris There is nothing new under the mathematical sun! 
