Folly of the Faithful Canine

You may have seen “PEMDAS” and other mnemonics
For math, but I lack satisfaction:
Parentheses, exponents, multiplication,
Division, addition, subtraction?

You’re really supposed to subtract before adding.
Take eight minus seven plus one.
From PEMDAS, you’d think the solution was zero,
Not two as it’s properly done.

Moreover, don’t multiply ere you divide.
Of course, fractions help make the point clear,
As four over twenty times twenty is four,
Not a hundredth, which isn’t so near.

Yet mathematicians declare that M’s equal
To D and A’s equal to S.
Perform operations in left-to-right order,
And then you’ll avoid the whole mess.

To my mind, they made it less simple than needed.
Just say “P-E-D-M-S-A.”
Admittedly, that doesn’t roll off the tongue,
So perhaps it’s less catchy that way.

In any event, if you fear ambiguity,
You can rely on parens:
Whatever’s inside them gets highest priority.
Thank you for reading, my friends.

The Monty Hall problem is named for a host
Of the game show called Let’s Make a Deal.
A player picked one of three doors, and Hall opened
Another, a goat to reveal.

The player could then choose to open that first door
Or switch to the other still shut.
One door hid Goat 2, and the other, a car
For a prize. If you go with your gut,

You might just assume the two options are equally
Likely to get you the car.
Statistician Steve Selvin asked Marilyn Mach
vos Savant if they actually are.

The magazine columnist’s answer at first
Was rejected by many a scholar.
With proofs by computers and humans, the number
Of naysayers got a lot smaller.

If Hall hadn’t already known where the car was,
The odds would be equal indeed,
But since he would start with a goat every time,
What he skipped was more apt to succeed.

This problem is called a veridical paradox,
Seeming absurd but quite true.
The Three Prisoners problem and Bertrand’s box paradox
Mirror the math of it too.

If you attend a carnival, beware the Razzle games,
Which go by “Cajun Bingo” and a bunch of other names.
A bettor spills eight marbles from a cup upon a board.
They land in holes with numbers to determine how it’s scored.
A grid displays which totals lead to points toward a goal
That lets you pick a prize, so no one stops at just one roll.
A throw that sums to 29 will double throwing’s price
But also means more prizes if successful, which is nice.
The trouble is, the winning sums are always high or low.
The grid’s in random order, so you likely wouldn’t know.
The chance of scoring anytime is only 2%.
A 29 is probable, and so is your lament.
Ironically, the operator often starts with lies
Pretending you got points and thus may soon attain a prize.
Take note that many prizes are expensive, like TVs,
A telling sign you can’t expect to garner them with ease.
Since folks have lost a fortune, many nations have it banned—
Which doesn’t mean you’ll never see a Razzle-Dazzle stand.

The number pi’s been championed from ancient times to now,
But many people say that we’d do better using tau,
Which equals twice the pi amount. The letter stands for “turn,”
A unit of tau radians, as I was glad to learn.
The rationale for using it: For nearly all occasions,
We multiply the pi by 2 in circle-based equations.
Circumference is noted as πd or 2πr.
Diameter gets measured less than radius by far,
And tau can surely speed us up in finding a solution
To areas of other shapes and normal distribution.
The trouble is, most formulae where tau makes sense to choose
Are ones that only certain math’maticians often use.
Most people never calculate reactance of inductors.
For areas of circles, tau is more of an obstructor.
What’s more, we know a lot of tricks for calculating pi,
From centuries of thought; with tau, they’re harder to apply.
And then, of course, to western mindsets, pi is just more fun:
We treat ourselves with pastries to enjoy a cutesy pun.

My mom highly recommended this book to me for personal reasons. Author Daniel Tammet, not much older than me, has both Asperger's and, as you might have guessed from the title, synesthesia. Also like me, he takes a strong interest in language, numbers, and trivia such as the dates of U.S. presidential administrations. He furthermore became a devout Christian after reading G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy (and noting, as I hadn't, that Chesterton was probably on the autistic spectrum as well), tho that doesn't get mentioned until the last few pages.

The book receives no shortage of praise. Superlatives, even. The front cover blurb puts Tammet's mind ahead of Stephen Hawking's in terms of intrigue.

Now that I've read it... well, I'm not sure what I was expecting. You know how autists tend to be absorbed in their own little worlds? Yeah, this is more self-centered than the usual autobiography. And perhaps more prosy. Minor details keep popping up, not so much to enrich the scenes as to demonstrate the workings of his differently focused mind. The book could hardly be otherwise, really, but the result is that I got pretty tired of it, even as he grew to adjust better to the world around him. Probably the best parts to me are when he sheds light on subjects broader than himself.

Tammet is a savant, having gained fame for partaking in a documentary, memorizing a record number of pi digits, and learning Icelandic in a week. All amazing, to be sure, but there's only so far it can carry my interest in a narrative.

And savantness aside, nothing about his thinking or behavior is really alien to me. Maybe that's why I don't share the opinion of the cited critics: too much familiarity. Ironic when you consider that a staple of Asperger's is a rage for the familiar.

ADDENDUM: The book needs a new grammatical proofreader. Even a British editor should agree that many of those sentences badly need commas and some need periods, colons, or semicolons in place of commas.

I'd seen a reference to this days ago, but I didn't think to mention it here:

What's wrong with this title?

Another instance of adults making mathematical errors that I would have caught at age 8.