MathPlus's definitions

Logarithmic Instinct

When our primitive instinct makes us treat the comparison of large numbers as logarithmic rather than linear—for instance, we feel like the gap between a trillion and a billion is the same as that between a billion and a million, because both are a thousand times bigger, when the jump to a trillion is really much bigger.

When young children are asked which number is halfway between one and nine, their answers are three instead of five, as given by those with formal schooling. Is this a case of logarithmic instinct, where the middle is in relation to multiplication rather than addition: 1 × 3 = 3, 3 × 3 = 9?

by MathPlus October 8, 2020

Exclamation Point

A question mark that has been straightened out by God, if you put your faith in Him for things you don’t understand—when you are in the valley where life seems unfair, yet you wait upon His grace and goodness to turn things around.

Whenever you find yourself in those dark places (breakup, betrayal, death, debt, divorce, hurt, job loss, sickness, …), know that God can turn your question marks into exclamation points.

by MathPlus December 30, 2018

V-Souls

Short for “Vaccinated Souls.” When unjabbed saved souls might temporarily be denied entry at Pearly Gates until they present their vaccination certificate, in which case they would be sent back to Earth to get their WHO-approved shot before they could enjoy the eternal privileges of their stress- and suffering-free status.

Guesstimate how many born-agains, not considered V-souls, would be turned away in 2021, who failed to take into account that few angels were trained to detect any asymptomatic corona cases.

by MathPlus June 24, 2021

Musk Math

Brain-unfriendly math questions that leverage on the wealth of South African-born billionaire Elon Musk, whom mainland Chinese worship as “King of Mars” or “Rocket Man” for building flying cars and colonising the cosmos—they view Mr. Musk as a coldblooded god, compared to Jack Ma, whom they call a “performing monkey.”

Two Musk Math questions are:
a) Guesstimate how many face masks China could produce from billionaire Musk’s obscene wealth.
b) If Mr. Musk spent ten thousand dollars every day, would he have enough money left by the time he experienced his last heartbeat?

by MathPlus March 12, 2021

Mathematically Playful

When a math educator desires to be creative, purposeful, and challenged in teaching or sharing math to the best of their abilities—for example, submitting some math tidbit or irreverent math entry to Urban Dictionary to humanize the most disliked subject in school.

Being mathematically playful might win you a number of fans and friends, but it often triggers an unhealthy climate of envy and jealousy among your fiends and foes, who will serially and wickedly downvote any published math entries at the slightest opportunity, thus immaturely exposing their deep hatred and irrational fear.

by MathPlus February 2, 2019

Mask Wearing Syndrome

When people continually wear a face mask daily long after the coronavirus pandemic has been contained—when mask withdrawal causes them psychological pain rather than physical gain.

Guesstimate how many people worldwide suffer from mask wearing syndrome, who need to seek treatment for their withdrawal symptoms.

by MathPlus June 8, 2021

Mask Rules

When mask wearing in most parts of the world remains mandatory to protect the population from infection, as a large proportion of them have yet to be vaccinated, with some anti-maskers or maskholes in the name of personal rights playing hide-and-seek with the authorities to avoid donning a face mask.

Although only fully vaccinated people are exempted from wearing a mask in public, tens of thousands of unjabbed diehard Trumpists in several red states pay lip service to the mask rules, because they figure out that the odds of them getting caught are very low.

by MathPlus June 7, 2021