Mar 23
Cat Proximity and its effect on the human intelect
Posted in Comic Strips Tagged algebra, calculus, comics, graphs, intuition, qualitative, writing, xkcd
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Randall Munroe drew a lovely comic strip graphing the effects of proximity to a cat on the human intellect:
(You can view it here: http://xkcd.com/231/).
In differential calculus I asked students to describe the graphs using their knowledge of calculus. Statements about both the first and second derivative are expected.
In Intermediate Algebra here at UDM we study qualitative graphs, so I also asked my Algebra students to describe the graph. These students have to say things like the intelligence of the human is decreasing, but at an ever faster rate.
One caution with this comic: some students do not know what “inanity” means, so I use this problem on the review sheet rather than the exam.
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