The Puddle

At 0830 it was too dark to read so EKA shut "MATLAB for Engineers" and got lost trying to find the bus stop. It was colder than yesterday and starting to get windy and he wished he'd brought a second coat. Douglass campus is the only one he knew he could get lost on, and nothing looked familiar anymore.

Finally he came to the Puddle, where he knew there was a REXB stop on the other side. Walking around the water he tripped on a low stone bench and dropped the MATLAB book into the Puddle. EKA stopped for a moment. It wasn't such a great book, but he didn't like to just leave garbage in the pond. As he stood there trying to think of a way to fish it out, a person emerged from the site of the book's weird misfortune. In front of EKA was a man with leaves and branches growing from his head, vines winding around his legs dangling into the water. In his arms he carried another person, a man in his twenties who was either sleeping or dead.

EKA, unsure of how to react, stood watching until he saw the bus's luminous windows in the corner of his eye. About to forget MATLAB and head for the bus, EKA noticed that the sleeping cargo was his MATLAB professor Blase.

The three of them stood that way for hours. Buses came and went, the night turned into morning, but no one would find EKA; he never told anyone where he was going and did not carry a cell phone. Even his roommate wouldn't wonder, since Allen always went to bed by midnight and expected EKA to be gone then.

The sun was up now, and both EKA and Blase would have to be in SEC-110 soon for MATLAB lecture. Sensing class would not meet today, EKA took the bus home and went to sleep.

You seem like the type of person who would...

This idea is due to someone who wishes to remain anonymous.

It's an icebreaker game: you take turns saying to someone else "You seem like the type of person who would ..." and finish the sentence. The more you offend people the better it breaks the ice.

"You seem like the type of person who wouldn't use soap."
"You seem like the type of person who would write about dumb games like this."

The 'Math is Always Right" Principle

This idea is due to Charlie Loelius and Owen Healy.

The Math is Always Right principle:

When a mathematical model and reality disagree, the interpretation is that the math behind it is right, but it is applied incorrectly to the situation.

Corollary:

This leads to the impression that math is always right.

Corollary:

This leads to the impression that reality is always wrong.

Example:

You predict the time for bottle of ketchup pushed off a table to hit the ground. The number is close but not quite right. The math behind the model (quadratic equations, the real number system, calculus) is considered to be fundamentally valid, but other factors (air resistance) made the model not completely accurate in this situation.

The interpretation you did not use is that the model is fundamentally right (takes into account the entire physical situation) but the math behind it (the real number system) is wrong in this case. Either interpretation could theoretically have been used to resolve the situation.

Another Example:

Catholicism = 2
Protestantism = 3
Judaism = 5

Therefore Catholicism + Protestantism = Judaism.

The math is clearly right, but the application to this situation is absurd.