Drake

(Click on the cartoon to see the full image.)

(C)Copyright 2011, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


You won't convince him otherwise. He's just SET In his ways.

And, interestingly, this comic has nothing to do with Sir Francis Drake.

Let's Have Fun: Tessellations Made Easy

Just having a little fun. Take one of the images below. I used the smaller one.

Now, draw a curved line from a number on the left side to a letter on top. You can use a straight line, but that's a little boring. I used 3 and C.
After that, draw another line using the same letter and number on the bottom and the right. Mine looks like this:

Erase all the letters and the numbers. Select the entire image and Copy it. Then Paste three copies, making a bigger square.

Change the color of the light gray grid lines to white, the same as the background color. The earlier you do this, the more work you'll save later! (I realized this the hard way, naturally.)
Copy the newer, bigger square and Paste three copies. This saves some time, too.

Start coloring, alternating strips with two different colors.

Finally, cheat! Sort of.

Another round of cutting and pasting wasn't going to work unless I shrank it. Depending on the paint program you use, you need to color it in advance because it will be problematic later on.

I finally wound up with this:


Where could you use this?
Simple. Forget everything after the first two steps. Just fill in a pattern in one square, color it, and save. It will tessellate nicely as a background image for a webpage. Just make sure to pick colors that don't make the text unreadable.

Hot Dogs

(Click on the cartoon to see the full image.)

(C)Copyright 2011, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


It's not an extra bun, it's a spare for the one that falls apart.

No, Secant!

So about yesterday's comic ...

Okay, I could tell you that the gray U-shaped figures are part of the punchline, although that isn't very clear in the presentation.

And I could say that those gray shapes are actually negative secant and are a part of a different equation in the same system being graphed together, which would explain why they are colored differently.

Or I could just tell you that I screwed up a comic which bears some but not much resemblance to what I'd originally pictured in my head. I oversimplified the concept to the point were there was just a U-shape in the center of an empty field. It didn't scream "secant" to me, so I new it needed something. So I added the asymptotes, but it still looked empty, so I added two more on either side and finally added the -pi/2 and pi/2.

I even double-checked a graph to make sure that it was supposed to be pi/2. I didn't notice that the rest of my "graph" was incorrect. Oopsie.

Nice to know that I have a few readers out there who will comment, even if it's to point out my mistakes. Moral of the story: when you're tired, take the day off.

A corrected version for those who didn't buy my explanation yesterday:

Secant

(Click on the cartoon to see the full image.)

(C)Copyright 2011, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


Some think he's sec(y), but don't get too close, because he's the opposite of cos(y).

Logic Puzzle: Socrates and Euclid

I've used this with students in the past to see if they have a grasp of when certain historical events were in relation to each other or who lived first. (I'll admit, I was bad with that sort of thing back then.)

But here's the puzzle: without giving me any dates (so don't bother with wikipeida), just some kind of relationships to people and events, prove to me which of these great thinkers came first: Socrates or Euclid.

Sometimes they can work a simple chain of events that doesn't require footnotes and a bibliography.

Battleship

(Click on the cartoon to see the full image.)

(C)Copyright 2011, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


A few days ago, someone asked me if I knew how she could blow up an image. I told her she could try C4. She pressed those keys, but nothing happened. Not the C4 that I was thinking of.

Roses

(Click on the cartoon to see the full image.)

(C)Copyright 2011, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


Happy Valentine's Day 2011!

Happy? Know It?

(Click on the cartoon to see the full image.)

(C)Copyright 2011, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


If they had used that kind of logic, then maybe those truth tables would have been easier to figure out.
Or maybe converse is true.

Movie Words

(Click on the cartoon to see the full image.)

(C)Copyright 2011, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


The Lord of the Rings: the Return of the King --
4 the, 2 of, no part, episode or Roman numerals.

I was hoping that a Dirty Harry movie had made over
$100 million, so "Harry" would've outnumbered "Potter".

Language May Play Important Role in Learning the Meanings of Numbers

From the National Science Foundation:

New research conducted with deaf people in Nicaragua shows that language may play an important role in learning the meanings of numbers. Field studies by University of Chicago psychologist Susan Goldin-Meadow and a team of researchers found deaf people in Nicaragua, who had not learned formal sign language, do not have a complete understanding of numbers greater than three. Researchers surmised the lack of large number comprehension was because the deaf Nicaraguans were not being taught numbers or number words. Instead they learned to communicate using self-developed gestures called "homesigns," a language developed in the absence of formal education and exposure to formal sign language.

More at: http://nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=118586&org=NSF&from=news

100 Years

(Click on the cartoon to see the full image.)

(C)Copyright 2011, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


And let's not forget:
"Tear down this arc."
"Honey, I forgot to induct..."

Fun With Eight

(Click on the cartoon to see the full image.)

(C)Copyright 2011, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


At least, he's not lemniscating on thin ice.

Hero's Formula

(Click on the cartoon to see the full image.)

(C)Copyright 2011, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


This looks like a job for... Semiperimeter!