FoxTrot by Bill Amend for April 19, 2009

Excellent!

bleeep i was going for first post with the answer…bill is getting lazy some of the letters he didn’t use have non-numeric answers

Too bad you didn’t need to use the Integral.

Bill’s not getting lazy - they all resolve to numbers. There’s a difference between the minus (see H) and the division (see L) operators.

7-11-23-15-20-13-23-11-17-15-9-26

13-20-10-10-17-11-6-13-2-10

As I was doing these, I wondered if Bill writes SAT’s? They all have some elegance to them, making them easy to do in your head quickly if you recognize what he was getting at for each one. The trigonometric and calculus ones got me, though, just because I haven’t done that in a while.

What a little turd!

Wow, I’m amazed I can still do most of these in my head! (except for the trig, which I need a calculator for)

The integral is 3x^3:

3(2^3) - 3(0^3) = 24

Wow… my brain’s not in gear today… that was fun, though!

19-13-16-11-16-11

I bet Bill gave millions of people a kick as this has been the first chance to do silly math like this in…ages!

The fun part is you don’t need to solve them all. Once you get the first few letters, it’s obviously Paige Fox. Which is pretty much what it’d be about given the two characters featured.

She sure is, Jason… She sure is…

FUN? GAHHH! I’m with Paige on this one!

Thank you, fearciuil for letting me not do math on a Sunday. (not do grammar either)

Terrible! The Spanish version wasn’t translated: http://www.gocomics.com/espanol/foxtrotespanol/2009/04/19/

The Spanish translation of Fox Trot is often not as good as some others (especially Calvin and Hobbes, which seems to be quite good), but this time they didn’t even try!

(I gave it a shot, but my translation is probably not too hot either. But at least I have one!)

The mathematical expressions next to the letters all evaluate to some number between 1 and 26. Those give the corresponding letters for the numbers on top. With those correspondences, the numbers spell out “Paige Fox is Bad at Math.”

Awesome. ^_^

I solved C and Q, only to realize that they are not in the sentence. D’oh!

From ‘The Notebooks of Lazarus Long’ by Robert A Heinlein

“Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable sub-human who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.”

It’s best to not overthink it, and just use good standard ACT/SAT Math test methodology. Buzz through and do the ones you can easily do in your head. Also do those that still use basic Algegbra, but might require just a little, quick pencil work, and you will then find you are done. Any that might be a bit more challenging, for some, like C, K, Q, & U, turn out not to be needed, at all. My Trig is rusty, but turns out it dosen’t matter. An early clue is that there are 26 clues, but only 14 unique #s.

The Artemis Fowl books by Eion Colfer use a substitution code of symbols for writing in “Elvish”. The “rosetta stone” for the code is given in the first book.

My great nephew at 7 could manage the books, but begged my help with the coded messages. I explained how the code worked, and helped him work out the key.

We started decoding the messages, and he was astonished that, after ten or so messages, I started sight reading the code without using the key.

I supposed years of working in machine code trains the brain in pattern recognition.

My son likes to play around with codes. There is this code which is supposed to be an alien language on the show “Futurama”. It shows up all the time. It’s a substitution code. He broke it and keeps up with the messages on the show. Sometimes the messages are the best part of the show.

8-13-6-6 11-22-10-20-17 13-23 11-4-10-23-15-22-10. 12-19-11-20-26-23 2-15-9 12-19-10 24-3-13-14! 25-10-9-21 10-20-7-15-21-11-8-6-10.

[quote]Step 1: Eliminate C, K, Q & U [/quote] Oh come on people! Q is easy to do in your head if you’ve had your first or second year of high school calculus. Integration is derivation backwards. S[0..2] 9x^2 dx (9/3)x^3|0..2 3(0)^3 + 3(1)^3 + 3(2)^3 0 + 3 + 3(8) = 3*9 = 27

K = |-26| = 26. That’s absolute value… which means whatever the number, it is always positive.

C = sin(Pi/2) = 1 U = -3 Cos(Pi) = -3 * -1 = 3 By the end of high school pre-algebra, you should have your trig functions memorized. Truly this will save you a lot of time the rest of high school and college.

Will you ever use this in the real world? Probably not (and I speak as a graduated CECS major working in software QA) except to solve Foxtrot comics ;) … Now, if you become an engineer of something, then you’ll use this stuff on a daily basis.

oops… I made a mistake in the integral (actually two… I caught one before posting). I’ve spent too much time in the upper algebra classes :-/

That should be 3(2^3) * 3(0^3) = 24.

If you must know, my first mistake was multiplying the 9 by 2.

3(2^3) * 3(0^3) = 24

That mistake is because it is midnight :p

3(2^3) - 3(0^3) = 24 - 0 = 24

Bravo. Excellent way to get your readers to flex their math muscles.

Helo Bill

I don’t see the answer to K. I think it should be 26.

I don’t see the answer to Z. I think it should be -14/0 or “infinity.

Thanks for your help.

Take care. Ken Whelan ken@kwa.net 206 351 8177

I don’t know if anyone pointed this out before me, but for letter L you must assume that x is not equal to zero ;D

What fun!

-14/0 is not infinity. it’s an error message because you can’t divide zero. When you divide by zero the universe turns inside out and you can prove that 1=2 or that 1= (anything else you jolly well please), basically, all of mathematics breaks down. My math teacher in high school used to tell us that if you divide by zero, the math cops will come out and string you up by your toes from the flag pole and play tether-person with baseball bats.

The operators in Z are dot (meaning multiply), not minus. Hence, no division by zero.

4-19-11-12-11-19-3-19 10-4-11-23-12-10-15-2 12-13-22-10-13-22-9 10-11-6-6-21-23-3-16 9-13-23-10-17-12-19-11 12-13-12-15-15-26-23 15-22-3-1-19-12-13 22-10-15-20-11-22-15 20-17-11-21-22-15-9-20 13-20-5-12-15-23-15-6 25-10-12-19-13-23-16-3 14-14-6-10-11-20-17-12 19-10-20-1-9-10-11-12 10-11-19-3-5-10-22-10 23-23-11-5-10-6-13-26 10-12-19-13-23-15-20 10-2-15-9-11-6-6-15-2 21-15-3-12-15-17-10-1 15-17-10

L evaluated at 0 would result in 0/0 = 1, right? Some mathemagician named Brahmaguptra said this is 0 and that it is a fallacy to say it is equal to 1 (which results in 1=2 proofs). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_by_zero

I suppose he should have written L = (9x+9x)/3x | for all real numbers except 0

wow. I can’t believe I can do every one in my head (except C, U, and Q)!

Xerloq said “19-3-19-10”. Did you mean to say “19-3-5-10”?

it only took like ten minutes!

26-10-6-6-21-4-11-13-19-10-9-10

I was getting tired of translating all the comments people were posting, so I wrote a little Javascript app to do it: http://www.amrittuladhar.com/projects/foxtrot/

I need to get some sleep…

Thanks so much for this comic. It was lots of fun (although on the easy side). I could not read the rest of the comics until I finished it. MORE LIKE THIS!

Well, it was pretty easy math. Except for the trig and integration ones (C, Q, U). And even those are easy if you can remember trig and calculus. Weird thing is, I’ve been in computing for forty-five years now, and never had to use either. Not like they told me, not at all.

The Code Means P-A-I-G-E-F-O-X-I-S-B-A-D-A-T-M-A-T-H

DON’T GIVE AWAY THE ANSWER, SOME OF US ACTUALLY WANT TO FIGURE IT OUT.

It’s no wonder this country is in such trouble. 23 of the 26 expressions are nothing more than simple arithmetic: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and roots! Grammar school stuff. Two are simple trig values: the trig equivalent of 1+1=2 (eighth grade skills). Only one involves beginning calculus and that one is not used but could be determined by process of elimination.

It is very sad to witness the results of our failed of educational system here. Teachers not required to know math “teaching” math is like the blind leading the blind and is doomed to failure.

Math is a basic life skill in today’s world. Without an educated population no country can compete and is on a path to self destruction.

My 6th grader could (and did) solve all of these except for the trig and integration. The puzzle was fun but not all that challenging. It might look hard at first, but the problems are really quite simple. 14 x 14 x 14/14 x 14 is clearly 14 not infinfity or zero or any such nonsense.

To Furienna: No offense, but I thought European schools were supposed to be far superior to American schools, especially in math and science education. I’ll be a bit more skeptical from now on whenever ads tout “European engineering” to entice me to buy an expensive car or gadget.

I’m surprised at how many people are having such a hard time with this… it’s all simple arithmetic, and the trig and calculus bits are the most elementary problems possible.

This may be old news but I have also written a program to decode messages.

http://primepuzzle.com/tc/foxtrot.html

“Paige is bad at math”. Huh.

Paige-is-bad-at-math

Paige is bad at math.

Paige is bad at math is the answer, if you could not solve this, go back to school cuz im 12. Oh and i did this when i got the book, which was when the book came out Foxtrot sundaes

PAIGE FOX IS BAD AT MATH!!! YES I GOT IT!!!

thats not an insult, thats a fact

I didn’t even try because I knew someone (or many someones) would answer for me. Call me lazy, but I think that’s a waste of time.

Took me about 4 minutes to solve it all. And I’m not good at math.

whats it say?

the answer is Paige fox is bad at math, I worked all the math out before solving. I’m in 6th grade XD, and I solved “Q”

11,8,1?,17,10,2,5,19; 13,7,26,6,22,20,15,16,18?; 9,23,12,3?,25,4,18,21,14