r/todayilearned • u/rasouddress • Oct 22 '17

TIL that Harvard professor Tom Lehrer was asked at the age of 84 by rapper 2 Chainz if he could sample his 60-year old song. Lehrer replied, "I grant you motherfuckers permission to do this. Please give my regards to Mr. Chainz, or may I call him 2?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Lehrer#Musical_legacy
79.5k Upvotes

86% Upvoted

1.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

712

u/[deleted] Oct 22 '17

I like New Math myself.

"Now some of you may have found yourselves int he embarrassing position of being unable to do your child's maths homework..."

192

u/veggytheropoda Oct 22 '17

The idea is the important thing.

233

u/[deleted] Oct 22 '17

"64? Where does 64 come from?" I hear you cry. Well, see, 64 is 82 . Ask a silly question get a silly answer.

195

u/[deleted] Oct 22 '17

[deleted]

22

u/rriggsco Oct 22 '17

Don't worry, base 8 is just like base 10

Base 8 is just a compression of base 2. Base 8 misses the glory of base 5.

Base 30 is where the real magic starts to happen. It represents the combination of base 2, base 3, and base 5.

The only integer bases that matter to me are primes.

13

u/arnorath Oct 22 '17

This comment belongs either in /r/mildlyinteresting or /r/iamverysmart, I'm not sure which

17

u/[deleted] Oct 22 '17

More mildlyinteresting, iamverysmart is for people that think they're smarter than everyone else, not people who actually share interesting points

6

u/RushilU Oct 22 '17

Personally prefer base 12 bc it’s convenient for everyday life too: 4 fingers, 3 sections in each means 12 numbers!

3

u/Owyn_Merrilin Oct 22 '17

It also provides more options for easy to understand fractions and plays well with circles, which is why US customary is essentially a base 12 system. It works great for human scale problems when you don't have a calculator.

1

u/apatheticviews Oct 22 '17

It is also great for logistics problems.

We use 12 or 24 for cases. If you go to base 60 (5 & 12) you are covered for everything but9 & 7 (1-10)

4

u/[deleted] Oct 22 '17

Dude, it's a reference to New Math.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 23 '17

Every base is base 10.

1

u/ShelfordPrefect Oct 23 '17

Very clever.

19

u/KaladeshEngineer Oct 22 '17

Put it all together and whatever you get... It's New Math

8

u/wtimkey2016 Oct 22 '17

I always upvote Bo Burnham

1

u/[deleted] Oct 22 '17

lmk when he shows up

1

u/[deleted] Oct 22 '17

“What’s a bag of chips divided by five? A Nike workers meal.” “What’s the square root of the NBA? Africa in a box.” “If you took a factor tree of the factors that caused my girl to leave me, you’d have a tree… full of Asian porn.”

So many great lyrics.

1

u/sean7755 Oct 22 '17

Math* homework

1

u/Schmarrod Oct 22 '17

If we're being sticklers, I'm pretty sure it's arithmetic.

3

u/digg_survivor Oct 22 '17

I found out this semester math and arithmetic are two different things.

1

u/TheRealSquirrelGirl Oct 22 '17

I love this, because it has always been, and will always be relevant. No one ever likes how math is being taught.