Re: education

On 2025-03-08, Rich wrote:
Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> wrote:
Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> writes:

 >>> http://web.archive.org/web/20190622112330/
 >>> http://www.math.ttu.edu/~pearce/jokes1/joke-086.html

 >> Lol.  I don’t get the joke.  What’s up with the joke?  I’m slow.  The
 >> waitress has a hard-science college degree but can’t get a job in her
 >> field?  That’s not a joke.  I don’t get the joke.  Please explain? :)

The joke didn’t seem obscure to any degree to me, TBH, not
requiring much context aside basic calculus knowledge, which
is something I think anyone interested in CS should posess.

Quite unlike, say, “For the umpteenth time, Sam!  It’s not
Palantír, it’s Pentium!”  Or “Lysenko’s own arrogance was his
undoing: he climbed a pine tree to gather apples, and was killed
when ripe coconuts fell from it.”

 > The joke is that the second mathematician, who should know better,
 > gave the waitress the wrong answer to repeat.

 > The waitress pretends to be dumb when he gives her what will be the
 > wrong answer to his question.

 > Then, when he asks the question, she repeats his incorrect answer
 > flawlessly, and adds in the correction he should have known himself.

The way I read it, the waitress doesn’t know the question at
first, so cannot decide whether the answer she’s asked to give
is correct or not.  Once she does, she adds the correction.

 > I. e., the joke is that the mathematicians were not quite as “smart”
 > as they thought they were.

There’s an added irony that even though the second mathematician
insisted that “most people can cope with a reasonable amount of
math,” he evidently didn’t quite believe it himself.

A while ago, I’ve been told that a story like that happened at
the university I’ve graduated from.  The students were spending
a break between classes outside, and so was one of the professors.
Hearing them complain of how hard their (fairly basic) math was, the
professor commented something along the lines of “that’s everyone’s
knowledge.”  So, he called a guy loitering nearby who looked like
a common tramp and asked him to solve a simple algebra or calculus
problem; thinking for a bit, the guy gave the correct answer.

(Or something like that; my recollection of it is rather vague.)

What I take from the joke is: do not underestimate average Joe.
(Or Jane, as the case might be.)  A sentiment that is also at
the core of G. K. Chesterton’s “The Trees of Pride”,
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Trees_of_Pride .