I hope that you know enough about baseball to appreciate the elegance of the baseball's seam: http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc98/4_11_98/mathland.htm At 12:53 PM 7/4/03 +0200, Joerg Arndt wrote:

* Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> [Jul 03. 2003 21:47]:

...

But you're actually making an important point. These tests _do_ measure cultural issues. So what? If the issue is to get along in _this_ society -- i.e., go to college, get a job, etc. -- then cultural issues _do_ matter. Rather than trying to eliminate them from the test, let's put them back into the curriculum. Let's take everyone to a baseball game, so that they know what "America's pastime" is all about.

Agreed.

However, in math books I find the (not so rare) baseball examples pretty annoying. It should in in almost all cases be possible to find an analogue that doesn't use baseball. (I am german & have absolute no clue about baseball).

-- p=2^q-1 prime <== q>2, cosh(2^(q-2)*log(2+sqrt(3)))%p=0 Life is hard and then you die.