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Mathematicians can have a focus (and corresponding lack of real-world awareness) that puts even us engineers to shame. Once as an undergrad I was taking a class
by Analemma_ 9y ago
Mathematicians can have a focus (and corresponding lack of real-world awareness) that puts even us engineers to shame. Once as an undergrad I was taking a class in the math building, and there was a professor blocking the door because he was reading a flyer taped to it about an upcoming symposium or something. I coughed a little to indicate I was there, and he turned, acknowledged my presence, and then went right back to reading the flyer for another fifteen seconds or so.
We love you, you crazy bastards.
- satsuma 9y agoI feel like they should count for less points in Nerd Sniping. https://xkcd.com/356/ https://xkcd.com/356/
- waqf 9y agoBut how many points in grammar trolling?
- satsuma 9y ago...It's "fewer" there, isn't it.
- Gaelan 9y agoLess is used when you can't count the object discussed. Fewer is used when you can. "I have 2 moneys" doesn't make sense, so you use "less money." "I have 2 points" does make sense, so you use "fewer points."
- mcguire 9y agoI dunno... "Fewer rational numbers" works, but "less real numbers" sounds funny.
- Gaelan 9y agoI feel like I'm missing a joke here, but you can count real numbers ("the list contains 5 real numbers") therefore it's "fewer real numbers"
- satsuma 9y agoI can never remember a lot of those "X or Y" rules in grammar/English. Fewer or less, whom or who, etc. Might be my own ignorance, might be my teachers growing up using trainwrecks like "yous" and "alls."
- semi-extrinsic 9y agoThere's the classic/apocryphal story as well of the student who stops a math professor in the hallway and asks a complicated question. Professor gives a long, thorough answer, and the student becomes enlightened. Just as the student is about to leave, the professor asks "Wait, which way did I come from?" Student points out "That way", and the professor goes "Great, then I've had lunch."
- btowngar 9y agoNorbert Wiener, the MIT professor, is generally the source of many of these (probably somewhat apocryphal) stories of 'absent minded professors'.