Fields of onions

The Onion, commenting on Sarah Palin's resignation as governor of Alaska, writes that "Nothing can distract her laser focus from the ultimate prize: the Fields Medal.”

But Palin is 45, and the age limit for the Fields is 40. Perhaps she should aim for the Abel Prize instead?

(Note to the humor-impaired: this is not meant to disparage the Abel Prize.)

On the combinatorics of tourism

Tourists Not Leaving Landmark Until All Permutations Of Groups And Cameras Exhausted, from The Onion.

The Onion on math teaching

The Onion exposes poor math teaching in the schools.

Olympic math?

Report: Olympics Mathematically Likely To Happen This Year, from The Onion. Although the Olympic spokesperson in the article seems to think there's some weird ten-year periodicity...

A United States presidential election is also mathematically likely this year. There has been talk of "when will we announce our vice presidential candidates? The Olympics get in the way!", which is kind of silly.

How many people are doing it right now?

Report: Someone Totally Doing It Somewhere Right Now, from The Onion.

The fictional scientists used probability theory to figure this out. See, probability is good for something!

They're building a science thing!

From The Onion: Scientists Ask Congress To Fund $50 Billion Science Thing.

Another diagram presented to lawmakers contained several important squiggly lines, numbers, and letters. Despite not being numbers, the letters were reportedly meant to represent mathematics too. The scientists seemed to believe that correct math was what would help make the science thing go.

That's right, folks. Mathematics is all about numbers, at least in the eyes of Normal People. But I can't count how many times I've looked at a blackboard during a lecture and realized there wasn't a single number there.