This morning, dear reader, young Hannibal and fair Ivana stumbled
into my kitchen study in search of sanctuary from parental supervision, and as
I carefully put aside the brittle cuniform clay fragments of the Gilgamesh Epos
which I was translating for breakfast (they break things, these youngster, they
break things of invaluable worth…!), they settled down into the more
comfortable chairs at the kitchen table and opened their survival kits.
Both took out their tablets; Hannibal one of chocolate, his sister one
of Apple. They opened their priced possessions and went to work. I refrained
from looking at the boy (Hannibal chewing is one of the less pleasant sights this
universe offers), but I did shoot a passing glance at Ivana’s digital activities.
And as these new-fangled gadgets no longer have a top which blocks the outside view
(as the old, paleolithical ‘laptop’ at least still had) I could not help but
perceive what was on the screen. This what I saw:
Now, ever since I helped my good old buddy Oswald with the
preliminary chapters of his Untergang des
Abendlandes (God, that man was a bad stylist! He would never have made it
to his persisting fame without my skilled editor’s help!) I have been a sucker
for numbers and mathematics in general. So you’ll understand, dear reader, that
this picture fascinated me immediately.
‘Dear girl, what in
the world is that?’ I asked the fair Ivana.
‘Facebook,’ she
answered with the unmistakable tone of ‘mind your own damn business old jerk’.
‘No, I mean the
numbers… Those numbers there…’ I said, pointing cautiously towards the picture
(for all I know these screens may explode on touch…)
‘Ah, thát. That’s a
stupid riddle some dork posted. Says most people will come up with the wrong answer.
But it’s simple comme bonjour… A child could do it. Why: even an utter imbecile can
do it! You, Hannibal! Stop smearing chocolate all over them shards and
calculate this equation…!’
Hannibal dropped my now totally illegible baked clay Gilgamesh,
hopped over to his sister’s spot, and studied the Facebook page for 30 seconds
over her shoulder.
‘Why, that’s easy!’
he exclaimed triumphantly. ‘The outcome is 111,111!!’
‘Oh you stupid
nerd!’ the fair Ivana exclaimed. ‘Can’t you do anything right? It’s 63, you moron
de la frontera!’
I frowned, dear reader. I frowned like nobody frowned ever since
they told old Chris Columbus he had not landed in Japan but on the coast of Columbia…
‘Mind if I look at
that a moment?’ I asked.
‘Be my freaking guest,’
the fair Ivana spoke, and turned her tablet 180º towards me.
Well, what shall I say, dear reader? Two immense Oh Weh Erlebnisse were mine in the
course of a mere ten seconds. The first was that neither Hannibal nor Ivana had
discovered the correct answer. That was small surprise, since they go to school
in Spain. But worse still: beneath the posted picture were 131 answers, and not only did these answers vary incredibly and
astonishingly, but out of the 131 replies, the correct solution GOT
ONLY 32 VOTES!!! With which it came
in third!!!
Would you believe it? Can it really be true…? I now understand, dear
reader, why the West is sinking. Why its 2,500 year culture is finally going
down the drain, swept into the sewers of oblivion by lousy education, Hollywood
morality, the Musical Industrial Complex and the tongue of Miley Cyrus… The
word ‘mathematics’ has its origin in
the Greek for ‘That which is learned’.
And there’s the crux: it is learned no longer! Our digital young are almost
totally ignorant of even the barest numbers!
Bitter, bitter tears did I shed over lunch, dear reader, thinking of
the Hochkultur we inherited from
Imhotep, Pythagoras, Euclid, Archimedes, Brahmagupta, Khayyam, Galileo, Gauss,
Descartes, Schicklgruber, Newton, Leibnitz, Euler, Einstein, Gödel, Escher,
Bach and many, many more… And I am almost ready to throw in the towel and give
up my belief in Human Kind.
But perhaps you can help me, and save me, and solace a sad old man.
Perhaps you, my dearly beloved readers of taste, sophistication, maturity of
years and old-time education WILL score better than the Facebookies who
performed so dismally this morning?
So here is the challenge I put to you: calculate the outcome of
7 + 7 : 7 + 7 x 7 – 7
and post it below in the comments (preferably under your own honest
name). As soon as I have 25 answers, right or wrong, I will tally up the
outcome, and publish the correct solution, with its (simple simple simple)
explanation.
And, just for your amusement, here is a summary of the answers I
found on Facebook:
0 – 1 – 7 – 14 – 47 – 49 – 50 – 54 – 56 - 91 - and
last but not least ‘Albania’.
One of which is actually correct. And one of which I found hilarious
(guess which?)
Yours, MathemathicAl.
