Frazz by Jef Mallett for March 26, 2014

Algebra – the art of doing mathematics without using real numbers. Something the Federal Government has always done with the budget.

If a slice of pizza costs P and a soda costs S and there’s T% tax and I have M money in my pocket, do I have enough for me and the F friends standing outside the pizza place?

That’s algebra.

Your allowance is A, you want a comic book for C and an ice cream for I; how much can you add to saving up for a skateboard?

That’s algebra.

A politician claims that lottery revenue will be used to add to education spending, and what really happens is that it the money ALREADY spent on education gets spent on something else because, after all, there’s “new” money for education.

The FAILURE of most people to understand that fraud is the LACK of algebra (or most other math).

Nabuquduriuzhur: I frequently used algebra in my museum modeling work to scale dimensions from real life to the model under construction.

I use basic algebra and algebraic principles quite frequently, but it tends to be the more rudimentary applications. I cannot honestly say that I have ever used the quadratic formula outside of an algebra class (no, not even in calculus or civil engineering coursework). Given any choice at all, I will invariably factor an equation to solve it. Perhaps that is what @Nabuquduriuzhur was referring to.

If algebra is 2 + 3 = y, …..or 24 – x = y, solve for y if x = 5,if i 13…Not bad knowledge to have, Hey, I guess it’s a good game for the mind if nothing else…..But I’m a little unsure why someone would need to to know why 5(2-4)(-21 times -13) devide by -(-2 + 6 ) as the numerator and 10 – 6 -(6x) divided by the square root of 133, times 13x 1 – 3.14, a s the denominator…Really not sure where I would use it…..

Have no idea where the underline came from….

As an undergrad I was comforted by a promise from our university that if we took nothing else away after four years, we would have, at least, learned to THINK. Our “college” was Arts and Sciences. As someone has already pointed out, algebra opens the door to abstract thinking—something that too many try to avoid. Others complain that they can’t see the value of it. If we keep our minds open (so very painful for some), we can gain valuable insights from every subject we choose (or are forced) to take. Arts AND Sciences—food for both hemispheres of the brain. Kudos to the English major who minors in Math, or the Art major who also studies Chemistry. When I asked a friend, a Poli Sci prof, what she got out of her chemistry qualitative and quantitative analysis classes, she smiled and said, “Well, if nothing else, they made me a better cook.” Think about it (there’s that word again)!

oh my, I should have read these comments this morning….