The War on Good Math

Its quite rare that we see a true analysis of the real mathematical situation here at the school, so when a paper was submitted to the inquiring staff here at IIT we thought it best to publish, for the mathematical good of the community, not necessarily by necessity… 

Here goes – in a paper that apparently answers last week’s Sophomore Math paper prompt:

Thank you Dr. Olsson!

The War on Good Math

As we all know, Euclid isn’t really that good at Math. “He expects us to be smart. He expects too much of us” as one student put as quoted in the new book Victory Today for Math above Man. Neither do Apollonius’ conic sections do much to quell this over-expectation, but, as a recent survey of WCC Sophomores states, “he was only the prelude to even worse”. And that worse was this semester, what with the Math Wars that began amongst the Freshmen class several weeks ago and have so recently taken hold amid the Sophomores. The stress of it all obviously had to go somewhere, and this somewhere threatens to destroy the very essence of mathematics itself in its form contained as it is within the ever-depleted markers of the Baldwin whiteboards.

So in the face of great risk of being seen by enemies if you take a side in this conflict, math itself was being ignored in the face of outdoor pursuits, which have overtaken the physical forms and matter at least of what we call the “Wyoming Catholic Rockers”. In touch with the physical accidents of place exterior to Lander, and with new qualities, actions, and passions further affecting them, mathematics have all been forgotten until the terrible and fearful moment this morning when this paper was announced.

Moved by the justice of fulfilling the assignments given, the self-interest of a good grade and a smile from their professor, and the hope of eternal glory within a n order bigger than that of the Romans, perhaps something not even Dante, Virgil, Aristotle, or Euclid could have even glimpsed, students are getting back into math today, and they are doing it with more than their body, but their entire nature, making it not an accidental quality but their very themselves to be mathematicians by nature more than men.

To accomplish this end in writing this paper numerous students are getting help from Irkutsk Ice Truckers and their joint-venture partnership with Bart Rathbone at the Electric Palace and his community outreach organization, the Bones of Rath. Together, the students, IIT, and Bart’s organizations are achieving a perfect cubic root of the number denominated so as two by mental manipulation and cyborgotic technologies which aim to eliminate all other mental and bodily functions other than pure mathematical calculation. “We hope to make everyone at WCC a techie” Bart reports, “so that those old awful prime deserts out in the middle of the reservation may be drained, the perfect integers found and preserved, and every student glued to numerical study above even his motivations for justice, self-interest, and glory” (Rathbone, 55). Equality in mathematics is the new virtue that will be the only one cultivated by WCC students in this new movement, and it begins tonight, with dozens of papers just like this said to be presented as the last natural act of each student.

“After tonight, we will, together, eliminate our human natures and become pure mathematical reasoning” says Sophomore Marcus Gardner (Rathbone, 22). And the effects seem to have started already, even before the official “launch date” with dorm room conversations already turning into such phrases as “equals minus equals equals equals” or  “equals plus equals equals equals” or long recitations of digits of pi such as:

With this the “final solution” to the problem of mathematical equations at WCC is begun and Bart and the IIT team eagerly await the arrival of fully mathematical beings, who can as Bart says, “be manipulated by a few equal signs for dollars and cents!” (Rathbone 155)

Bibliography:

Bass, Ernie, “A Qualitative Analysis of WCC Sophomore Mathematical Stimuli on their Mental Apprehensions”, Irkutsk Ice Weekly, March 22, 2019

Rathbone, Bart, Victory Today for Math above Man. Lander: Olsson Math Press, 2019