MathPlus's definitions

Comfortably Uncomfortable

When you decide not to let unpredictability or uncertainty affect you and your future—you have come to terms that you have got to live with chaos, no matter how disruptive it can be in putting up a brake to your life’s goals.

Instead of blaming events or things that he’s no control over, John has learned to be comfortably uncomfortable in coping with life’s challenges—he doesn’t let bad breaks or misfortunes affect his attitude towards life; instead, he’s grateful that he can rely on God’s wisdom to overcome whatever obstacle comes his way.

by MathPlus July 20, 2018

Who Will Miss Trump?

Almost everybody who would be forced to look elsewhere come 1/20/2021 for new or rich sources of misinformation and dishonesty after the rejected, ejected, and dejected White Supremacist in Chief leaves office, whose idiocies and idiosyncrasies have atrophied or numbed the right part of the brain for hundreds of thousands of comedians, reporters, and even math educators since 11/9/2016.

“Who Will Miss Trump?” sounds like the political equivalent of “Who Took My Calculator?” or “Who Moved My Cheese?”

by MathPlus January 18, 2021

Vaccine Hypocrisy

When a country blamed other nations for using their own state-funded vaccines to expand their political and economic influence across the world, and now it is doing the same thing, by promising to donate millions of vaccine doses to developing nations to make up for its geopolitical losses, which arose due to fake political leadership.

To counter China’s and Russia’s vaccine diplomacy in the developing world, the US has succumbed to vaccine hypocrisy, as it plans to donate half a billion Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine doses globally as a desperate attempt to resurrect its comatose leadership on the world stage.

by MathPlus June 10, 2021

V Math

Short for “Vegan Math.” Math titles that indirectly promote a vegan lifestyle, by having zero questions on diary products like meat and milk, and excluding any brain-unfriendly chickens-and-rabbits and eggs word problems.

Math publishers are pressuring their meat-eating textbook authors for a V Math edition, by replacing questions on eggs, chocolate bars, and the like with non-diary products to target the millions of students and teachers with a vegan or vegetarian diet worldwide.

by MathPlus February 16, 2021

Singapore

Math educators’ promised land that combines the best practices of math education from the East and the West—one such concoction is the “model method,” the problem-solving heuristic that has had global appeal, especially among homeschoolers in the US, in solving challenging word problems that would traditionally need formal algebra for their solutions.

Due to their stand on democracy and freedom of speech, a number of American educators have stood firm in rejecting Singapore math, although they acknowledged that the math curriculum of the “fine” city is a superior one compared to those used in a number of US states in helping to raise the quantitative literacy of the students.

by MathPlus October 3, 2021

Why an X

When it is more effective to use a general letter x rather than a concrete numeral to represent a number, whose value constantly varies—an economic way to convey the idea of a variable in an equation or a mathematical sentence.

Why an X, and not an A, B, or C is because the letters x, y, and z have traditionally been used to stand for unknowns, while the letters a, b, and c for constants.

by MathPlus November 18, 2018

Wayang Math

When someone shows off the success of their exam-smart or pseudo-talented kids or tutees in school or olympiad math, by posting photos of their grades, awards, medals, or certificates on social media, dreaming for a googol likes in return—wayang is a Malay word that mockingly describes someone as being “fake” in the sense that they are putting up an act in front of others.

Guesstimate how many wayang math postings appear on Facebook and Instagram every year by oft-kiasu or egocentric parents to hint to their social circles of their “supernatural” parenting or tutoring skills.

by MathPlus November 13, 2021