A Set

of

Mathematical

Equivoques

For better or worse these “definitions” are my own creation. Undoubtedly my tilted point of view comes from years of working crossword puzzles and from a general passion for words and wordplay. I am writing this material with the hope of entertaining some kindred spirits and with the hope of planting a few seeds of the wonderful culture of mathematics into the imagination of students here and there. Over time I will continue to fill in with more “?” marks denoting the availability of explanations and links that I hope will make this site more useful, especially to students.

You can download a pdf copy of this material here. You can find a set of “Classic Equivoques”, including old saws like “gee, I’m a tree”, here. You can find a set of “Contributed Equivoques” here. You can find a record of recently added equivoques here.

Comments? Contributions? Corrections? You can email them to me at ksuman@winona.edu.

Ken Suman

Initially Posted on 8/12/2006, Lasted Edited on 4/25/07.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W XYZ

A Click on the ? marks

for more details.

Abelian – 10^9 or 10^12 depending on whether you studied math or maths at school	?
Abnormal Subgroup – the yellow ones
Abscissa – a person who is self absorbed with their abs	?
Absolute Geometry – geometry that doesn’t play fair	?
Absolute Value – nonnegotiable price
Absorbing State – “You can check in any time you like, but you can never leave.”	?
Abundant Number – a lot
Acceptance Sampling – launching a trial balloon
Acousmatic – someone who is quick to point fingers	?
Acute Angles – Brilliant Corners	?
Adams Operation – rib removal (first case of cosmetic surgery?)
Adding Machine – a good summer	?
Additive Identity – alias
Adèle Group – the Astaire’s
Adenine – nucleotide that takes 1 to 10
Adiabatic Law – always monitor your glucose level
Affine Variety – what a good store carries	?
Agonic – someone who lives in the past
Aha Problems – when a fence loses its head
Airport Problem – when you lose your in flight internet connection
Alethic – stout
Alexander Polynomial – Iksander, Richard Burton, Colin Farrell, but apparently not Leonardo DiCaprio
Algebraist – The Barber of Seville	?
ALGOL – what Julius Caesar divided into three parts
Aliorelative – onion
Aliter – a little more than a quart
Aliquot – “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee”
Allegory – Tipper’s husband when in Rome
Almost Everywhere – where kudzu grows
Almost Surely – Shirley
Alternating Group – Animagi
Alternation – Vatican City
Amenable Group – The Beatles	?
Amicable Pair – good friends
Amphibology – switch pitching
Analemma Curve – slant eight
Anallagmatic – Wrangler blue jeans
Analysis – denouement	?
Analysis of Variance – psychotherapy
Analytic Geometry – creole	?
Annealing – genuflecting
Annihilator – “weapon of math destruction”
Annulus – what the unhappy couple asked the priest to do
Ansatz – A ‘Convenient’ Truth	?
Anticlastic – indivisible
Anticomplement – a disparaging word
Antinomy – what’s added to textiles to make them flame retardant (and carcinogenic?)
Antipode – an acrobat who juggles with their feet
Antiset – flavoring for those delicious Italian cookies
Antitone – ‘ill conditioned’
a -Partite Graph – government corruption in South Africa between 1948 and 1994	?
Apeiron – what Oprah did on The Late Show
Apex – 16 gallons	?
Apothem – what the bluetick pup treed
Apotome – The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, 17 volumes, James Harrison, editor	?
Arbelos – where the pirate said the supplies were
Arcuate – without error
Arithmetic Geometry – Arithmetic on the Frontier	?
Arrow of Time – an anachronism	?
Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem – what goes up must come down (assuming we ignore the potential effect of dark energy and trees)
Astroid – a tag for Elroy’s dog
Asymptote – how the farmer got his lame donkey home	?
Automorphic Form – hardtop convertible
Autoregression – PT Cruiser
Autos Epha – carpeter (carpet layer)	?
Average – to bid farewell to the anger within	?
Axiom of Choice – The Importance of Being ‘Ernst’	?
Axis – sacks

B Click on the ? marks

for more details.

Back Substitution – artificial disk replacement
Baire Category – ursine breed
Baire Space – ‘polar plot’
Ballot Problem – rigged election
Bandit Problems – when DoD money dries up for consulting inside the beltway
Barber’s Paradox – stylist’s knot
Basel Problem – skin cancer
Basin of Attraction – the bathroom sink
Bayes’ Rule – wash the tub after each use
Beat the Dealer – Military Commissions Act provision for getting information out of Afghan opium traffickers	?
Bell Numbers – Cambridge Surprise Major, Little Bob Minor, Grandsire Triples, …
Bematist Goal – pari passu In the time of Alexander the Great (356 BC – 323 BC) surveyors were trained in the skill of maintaining a fixed length pace, a bema (βήμα), over long distances. The bema was the distance between successive steps and was roughly two and a half feet. These human pedometers were called bematists and were able to stay within 1/100 of a bema with each step! It is a persistent legend that Eratosthenes (276 BC – 194 BC) hired bematists to measure the distance from Alexandria to Syene as part of his famous effort to determine the size of the Earth. This story is beautifully told in the children’s book The Librarian Who Measured the Earth by Kathryn Lasky and is definitely worth reading by “kids” of all ages. The Romans, in contrast to the Greeks, defined a pace (Latin passus) as the distance that would bring a land surveyor (Latin agrimensore) back to the same foot (i.e. roughly five feet). Pari is Latin for “equal” and thus the phrase pari passu translates literally from the Latin as “equal pace”. Putting this together, we have that the goal of a bematist (Greek) is to maintain an equal pace, which is the literal translation of the (Latin) phrase pari passu. Pari passu is now used as a legal phrase with the general meaning of “on equal footing”. The phrase is also used in finance with the meaning “at the same rate”. e.g. All creditors will be treated pari passu. Incomes for middle class and wealthy families were not increasing pari passu. The equating of these Greek and Latin phrases apparently has no historical basis. But that is okay as there is a word for such invented linguistic miscegenations – it’s called macaronic. And as any Italian restaurateur will tell you, the best way to top off a meal of macaroni like this is with a slice of pari passu, that delicious Italian dessert made with mascarpone cheese. But then that would be a malapropism and that’s another story altogether. Fortunately, linguists will forgive all if you say it with a big enough smile.	?
Benford’s Law – “One is the likeliest number that you’ll ever know. Two is not as likely as one, but it’s the likeliest number since the number one.”
Bias – the two words parents hear most on the cereal aisle
Bicorn – an option at the Merc
Bicursal – the ability to swear in two languages
Bifurcate – her own sonogram machine and a customized 20 million dollar Gulfstream jet?
Big-Endian, Little-Endian – Much Ado About Nothing
Big M Method – product bundling
Big O Notation – Oscar Robertson’s number
Bing Sling – a highball with a cherry
Binit – when you’ve had your turn in tag
Biplot – selecting your final retirement location
Birthday Problem – old age
Block Scheduling – filibuster
BLUE – bummed
Bonnet Net – snood
Borda Count – 2(A – I +1) when in Boston
Boundary Condition – terminal case
Braneworld – “There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man.”	?
Brownian Motion – when a Girl Scout moves to recess
Butterfly Effect – Because a Little Bug Went Ka-choo!	?
Butterfly Effect – Psyched

C Click on the ? marks

for more details.

Calculemus – Machiavellian motto	?
Calculus – the Flintstone’s daughter	?
Canard Solution – Duck Soup	?
Canonical Analysis – weapons inspection
Cantor Dust – what a horse kicks up
Cantor’s Middle Third Set – second of an hazan’s three part performance
Cardinal Characteristic – bright red cassock and zucchetto
Carnap Rule – never wake a baby who has fallen asleep in a car seat
CAS + ATP – Deus Ex Machina
Casting Out Nines – pitching your niblicks
Catenary – without even a hint of malice or spite
Catenoid – what you get if you grab a tiger by the tail
Cattle Problem – BSE
Centroids – Emperor Palpatine’s (a.k.a. Darth Sidious) strategy for invading Naboo
Ceteris Paribus – Elsie the Cow
Chaos – The Gap
Cheney’s Card Trick – WHIG
Chinese Remainder Theorem – The virtuous ruler is like the pole-star: remaining in place while all the lesser stars do homage to it. Confucius
Chudnovsky Brothers – piquant
Church’s Thesis – God exists
Cissoid – an impolite way to describe your elder sister
Clinure – the two words kids hear most re their room
Cliques – Ska Geeks, Metalheads, Goths, Punks, …
Closed Function – a private party
Clothoid – devout
Clustering Illusion – apophenia
Cochain – what Joe Paterno is known for
Cofactor – someone faking a cold
Cofinal – what you have when students collude on the end of term exam
Collatz Problem – when pages of your exam are out of order
Column Space – stoa
Combinatorics on Words – magnetic poetry
Common Knowledge – heard throughout the dining hall
Commutative Group – carpoolers
Commutator – a spud-nik
Complement of a Set – best wishes to the newlyweds
Complete Pivoting – an about-face
Complete Residue System – solid waste system
Completing the Square – The Princess Diaries
Complex Analysis – study connecting guilt, inferiority, God, persecution, martyrs and nice guys
Complex Numbers – Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3, Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2, Liszt’s Transcendental Etude No. 5, and Chopin’s Etude No. 1, Op.10.	?
Complex Plane – the F-22A Raptor
Comprehensive Exam – day of reckoning
Conic Section – where Dilbert lives
Conjunction – The Joint
Construction Tools – Erector Set
Continued Fraction – an ongoing part
Contour Map – what tourists use at Alcatraz
Contrapositive – Oliver North’s point of view
Control Group – Agents 86 and 99, Chief, Larabee and Hymie
Cook’s Theorem – “the proof of the pudding is in the eating”
Coprimes – bop, hop, lop, mop, pop, sop, top, …
Corner Test – an autopsy
Correlation Implies Causation – cum hoc, ergo propter hoc
Coset – Jean Valjean’s daughter
Cossic Art – pysanky
Countability of the Rationals – "Everyone is crazy except you and me … and sometimes I wonder about you."
Critical Path – Main Street
Critical Point – exigency
Cross Product – double cross
Cross Validation – justifiably upset
Crunode – Bordeaux
C-Space – an ocean
Curve of Constant Width – spotting everyone the same number of points
Cyclic – lambative	?
Cylinder – what the revenuer asked the bootlegger

D Click on the ? marks

for more details.

Damped Sine – sine die

Data Mining – planting a nihilartikel

Data Snooping – what Sherlock Holmes does

Decanting Problems – what Socrates, Martin Luther, Giordano Bruno and Galileo Galilei had

Decimal System – Powers of Ten

Deferent – not quite the same

Degenerate Locus – a real boor

Degree Sequence – Bachelor’s, Master’s, Ph.D.

Deleted Neighborhood – aftereffect of an urban renewal project

Demand Curve – what students often do

Dequeue – ice cream parlor

Deranged Permutations – ‘mental mathematics’

De Revolutionibus – the VW Splittie

Diagnostic – Pat Robinson’s war cry

Diagonally – where Harry Potter shops

Diameter – a vending machine that eats dimes

Didactic Numbers – Take It to the Limit (Eagles), Operator (Jim Croce), Circle (Harry Chapin), Revolution (Beatles)

Difference Tables – buries the hatchet

Digital Computer – a Chisenbopper

Digital Root – toe hold

Digon – typical problem with board games

Directed Graph – organized crime

Disquisitiones – The Bee Gees, Donna Summer, KC and the Sunshine Band …

Divisible – when the gaming cube is in sight

Dixon’s Identity – Leslie McFarlane

DNA Computers – ‘genetic algorithms’

Dot Product – husband

Double Blind – taking an eye for an eye

Double Blind – turning on your bright lights in retaliation

Double Dot – peridot

Double Edged Ruler – benevolent dictator

Double Negative Elimination – when it’s two strikes and you’re out

Doubling the Cube – what you do in backgammon to squeeze your opponent out

Dual Space – field of honor

Dunnett's Test – a quiz to see who has done their homework

Dyad – what TiVo lets you say to commercials

Dyscalculia – Why Johnny Can’t Add

E Click on the ? marks

for more details.

Elementary Row Operation – feathering
Enqueue – Are You Being Served ?
Epistemic Justification – American Pie
Epols – run over the rise
Equals – online qualifying exams
Equant – mathematical financier who works online
Error Correcting Code – the “you break it, you own it” rule
Escher’s Ascending and Descending – going Up the Down Staircase
Essential Supremum – theism
Euler – Jiffy Lube employee
Euler Criteria – every 3 months or 3000 miles
Euler Line – slippery slope
Eversion – online adaptation
Evil Twin Strategy – designing a spoof WiFi hot spot with the intent of intercepting sensitive data	?
Evolutionary Operation – phylogenetic systematics
Existence Theorem – cogito, ergo sum
Existential Quantifier – agnostic
Explement – what it takes to be The Compleat ‘Angle’
Extraction of Roots – pulling teeth
Extraction of Roots – free radicals
Extraneous Roots – outside sources

F Click on the ? marks

for more details.

Fair Division – proper fraction
Fair Game – open target
Faltings’ Theorem – it’s easier to find it than accept it
Farey Series – Tales of the Brothers Grimm
Fatigue Failure – when your army pants wear out
Feller Property – prostate gland
Ferrari's Method – give it at least a 6 liter, 12 cylinder, 540 horsepower engine
Fictitious Play – Springtime for Hitler
Field Axioms – ground rules	?
Field Extension – one way to make it a pitcher’s park
Field’s Medal – potassium
Field Theory – “If you build it, they will come.”
Field Theory – agronomy
Figurate Numbers – 8, 88, 888, …
Final State – New Jersey
First Digit Problem – sore thumb
Fisher’s Exact Test – a hanging scale
Fisher Information – depth finder
Fixed Point – what a pencil sharpener gives you
Flexagon – what happens when you get old
Floor Function – to “give me a place to stand” (pou sto)
Floor Function – to make sherry
Flower of Life – Lucerne
Fluid Flow – a runny nose
Focal Cord – it vibrates to make sounds
Forcing – new suit bid by responder
Formalist Mathematics – The Great Game
Formally Real Field – Giant’s Stadium
FORTRAN – what the general did
Fourier Series – a line of shoes that comes in widths extra wide to extra narrow
Four Squares Theorem – four squares a day will soon make you round
Free Group – emancipated ones
Freshman’s Dream – a 4.0	?
Frieze Pattern – snowflake	?
Full Adder – Adderall
Functional Analysis – a checkup
Fundamental Group – supporting the APA
Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic – the Great Divide
Fuzzy Addition – dim sum

G Click on the ? marks

for more details.

Game of Life – Samsara
Game Theory – rules of play
Generated Field – A New Kind of Science
Genetic Algorithms – Mr. Holland’s (Magnum) Opus
Genetic Algorithms – ‘DNA computers’
Geoboard – weltschmerz
Gibbs Sampling – Bee Gees : Number Ones	?
GIMPS – Great Internet Mathematical Pun Search
Gnomon – first rule at an all girls school
God’s Algorithm – stella octangula	?
Goldbach Conjecture – (Copper, Silver, Gold) maps to (Gödel, Escher, Bach)
Golden Ratio – karat
Goniometry – joint analysis
Goodness of Fit Test – trying on a new pair of shoes
Gradient – your mother’s aunt
Gradus Suavitatis – The Sound of Music
Grasshopper Sequence – 28 (B.A.), 30 (M.A.), 34 (Ph.D.), 83 (Commodore), 85 (Admiral)
Gray Code – West Point regulations
Greatest Common Divisor – a wedge issue
Great Paradox – the Mayo Brothers
Grok Mathematics – “turn coffee into theorems”
Guthrie's Problem – fascism

H Click on the ? marks

for more details.

Haar Function – to keep your head warm
Habeas Corpus – The Texan’s Detain Law Massacre	?
Hairy Ball Theorem – “If you’ve got a taste for terror, then take Carrie to the prom.”
Half-Open – ajar
Half Space – overtrick bonus (points above the line)
Half Space – en
Halting Problem – faulty brakes
Harmonic Number – a blues harp tune
Harmonic Series – lick	?
Heaviside Cover-Up Method – wearing loose fitting clothes
Hero’s Formula – rescue the damsel in distress, smile, wave
Hexafoil – amulet
Higher Arithmetic – celestial reckoning
Higher Arithmetic Conference – summit
Hilary Term – 2008 – 2012 ?	?
Hippopede – hoof
Hitting Time – 16 or less
Homaloidal Space – Flatland
Homomorphism – reparative therapy (see Nonstandard Analysis)
Horner’s Method – sticking a thumb in
Horocycle – 12
Hotel Infinity – MGM Grand Las Vegas

I Click on the ? marks

for more details.

i ^i – eye to eye
i x i – cross-eyed
2i – ogle	?
5i – eye for an eye	?
Ideal Class – “where everyone is above average”
Ideal Point – mot juste
Idempotent – a powerful token
Ill Conditioned – ‘antitone’
Illegal Operation – medical malpractice
Ill-Posed Problem – hidden faces in a group photo
Imaginary Numbers – Fantasia Mathematica
Imitation Game – Simon Says
Immanant – nomen ambiguum (re immanent, imminent, eminent and emanant)
Incircles – how we often run
Inclusion-Exclusion Principle – ACT/SAT scores
Incomplete Design – adumbration
Indeterminate Form – amorphous
Infinite Mean – Great Expectations
Inner Product – bile
Inspection Paradox – it usually takes longer than it usually takes
Insphere – how too many people live
Integration by Parts – gradual desegregation
Integration by Substitution – forced busing
Into Mapping – a cartographer
Inverse Probability – Probability seems to remain An idea I’ve yet to attain. I was sure I played right In my poker tonight, But my fortune it went down the drain.	?
Inversion – dernier cri
Involution – contronym	?
ISETL – Babbitt
Ising Problem – being a note behind and a step off-key
Iterated Series – reruns

J Click on the ? marks

for more details.

John Dee – Bond, James Bond

Jordan Normal Form – just over 30 ppg

Just Rigid – recently passed

K Click on the ? marks

for more details.

K2 – Austin Godwin
K9 – Rin Tin Tin
Kaprekar Number – Claudette Colbert (Ellie) shows off her leg
Kernel – Blotto’s rank
Kissing Number – count your buss-ings
Klein Bottle – a small carafe
Knapsack Problem – a sleeping bag that’s too small
Knot Curve – straight
Knot Equivalence – difference
Know It All Number – 999 !	?

L Click on the ? marks

for more details.

Lah Number – six in the solfa
L'Analyse des Infiniment Petits – nanotechnology
Language of Arithmetic – Adder’s Tongue
Latin Square – Cato the Elder
Lattice-Ordered Group – everyone at the table who wanted a salad
Law of Sines – stop, yield, and no passing
Law of the Excluded Middle – the U distribution
Law of the Excluded Middle – marmite (you either love it or hate it)
Law of Truly Large Numbers – 2^À^0 = À1 is undecidable	?
Leading Digit – forefinger
Least Favorable Distribution – corridor of uncertainty
Least Favorable Prior – the most disliked person in the abbey
Least Squares – hippest
Left Censoring – aphesis
Liber Abaci – a showman with a silver candelabrum
Lie Group – Army of Northern Virginia
Lim Sup – cannibal favorite on cold damp days
Littlewood’s Law – “then a miracle occurs” occurs
Local Min or Local Max – peripeteia
Loess – s
Logarithm – poetry	?
Logistic Curve – procurement snag
Logit – how to harvest a forest
Long Tail – megillah
Lorenz Curve – when your cheap apartment suddenly quits being cheap
Lune – Minnesota’s state bird

M Click on the ? marks

for more details.

Mahler’s Number – a thousand (an orchestra of 250 and a chorus of 750)
Majorant – army ant
Majorize – bring up to the bigs
Maltitude – a large gathering at the shopping center
Markov Chains – used to mark off first downs
Mathemagician – ruler of Digitopolis
Mathematical Maturity – musemathematics	?
Mathematical Reminiscences – Howard’s End
Mathematicaster – a mathematician whose interior angle exceeds their compass	?
Mathesis – “We may be coming to a new golden age of instrument making.”
Mathesis Universalis – Catholic reckoning
MathSciNet – The Paper Chase –r
Matric – Beltane ring and run
Measure Preserving Transformation – Measure for Measure
Mediant – the third degree
Mellin Transform – honeylope	?
Memoryless Property – amnesia
Mental Mathematics – ‘deranged permutations’
Meter – what Cary Grant hoped to do atop the Empire State Building
Method of Exhaustion – a form of torture, regardless …
Method of False Position – playing the devil’s advocate
Method of Washers – agitate, rinse and spin
Milligram – shocking behavior
Minorant – pet peeve
Minuends – Yehudi and his two sisters
Minus Five – Paul Desmond standard
Misomaths – adenoids
Missing Data Problem – becoming unbalanced
Mod 3 – Pete, Linc and Julie
Modulus – when you are not as fashionable
Monster-Barring – what a night light is for	?
Monster Group – Titans
Monty Hall Problem – “To switch, or not to switch : that is the question:”
Moore Space – what everybody wants in their garage
Music of the Spheres – tinnitus
Mutatis Mutandis – put on a fresh diaper

N Click on the ? marks

for more details.

Nadir – a spoiler
Napoleon’s Problem – Waterloo
Natural Numbers – 7-11
Negatively Oriented – critical
Neusis Construction – when your mom is pregnant with a baby girl	?
Neutral Geometer – The No-Sided Professor	?
Nicolas Bourbaki – The Man Who Never Was
Nilpotent – weak
Nine Point Circle – SCOTUS at a round-table
Nodated – stag
Nonnegative – Antigone
Non-Orientable n-Manifold – Lost n-Space
Nonstandard Analysis – method outside of the APA Practice Guidelines
Nontransitive – not admitting a theodolite
Nowhere Dense – polymath
Nowhere Differentiable – identical
Null Space – vacuum
Number Sense – anesthesia
Number Theorist – primer
Numeracies – Spotted Horses

O Click on the ? marks

for more details.

Obelisk – Asterix’s comic sidekick

Oblate – recently

Occupancy Problem – Iraq

Ogive – how one requests a home on the range

Oloid – Rolie Polie Olie

One-Tailed – Harper Lee, Margaret Mitchell and Emily Bronte

One-to-One Correspondence – tête-à-tête

Open and Shut the Doors Problem – Jim Morrison’s addictions

Operations Research – surgical trials

Operator – someone who wouldn’t enjoy Fermat’s Last Tango

Ordered Group – plebes

Order of Operations – anesthetize before cutting

Order Statistics – accounts payable records

Organon – popular way to Toccata and Fugue in D Minor listen

Outer Product – sweat

Outlier – someone who gets a tan the old fashioned way

Overdamped – soggy

Overdetermined – trying too hard

Ovoid – to eschew

P Click on the ? marks

for more details.

Painlevé Equation – take two aspirin and get some rest
Pangeometry – what The Elements made Sylvester do
Paradigms – 20 cents
Parity Error – as in commited, writen, and commitee
Partial Fraction – a tiff
Partial Order – appetizers
Partial Summation – half adder
Partition into Distinct Parts – ability grouping
Partition into Odd Parts – gerrymander
Pedal Point – At the very moment Johann Sebastian Bach started his command performance of Toccata in F Major (BWV 540) for his benefactor Prince Leopold, Bach’s youngest son, (P.D.Q. Bach, 21^st of his 20 children) sat on a bass pedal of the organ. J.S. Bach had no choice but to play on as if this sustained bass pedal note was intentional. It took 54 bars but Bach’s second wife, Anna Magdalena, was eventually able to extract P.D.Q. from that bass pedal. This incident, led musicologist Peter Schickele to describe P.D.Q. Bach as “the worst musician ever to have trod organ pedals.”	?
Perfect Field – Elysian
Perfect Field – Field of Dreams
Perigees – a straight angle (i.e. two right turns)
Perigees – Leslie Caron
Perimeter – The Outer Limits
Permutation – counter counter proposal
Philo’s Line – “The triple pillar of the world transform'd into a strumpet's fool: behold and see.”	?
Phyllotaxis – what the “Sons of Liberty” had had
π = Square Root of 10 – Jane Eyre
Picard’s Method – ask Data
Pick’s Rule – you cut, I pick
Pillow Problems – stiff necks
Pillow Problems – mathematical lucubrations
Planar – less ornate
Plateau’s Law – good employees within an organization will enthusiastically advance to the highest level open to them but will then ultimately retire on the job
Playfair’s Axiom – the fundamental rule of the playground
Poisson Process – trawling
Poisson Support – fish dive
Polar Axis – Alaskan adzes
Polar Coordinate – a bare spot
Polar Plot – ‘Baire space’
Polya Process – census
Polygon – bird flu
Polykay – KKK
Polytope – shiver of sharks
Pons Asinorum – bridge to a clean and dry county
Porism – one “who works with a negligent hand”
Porous Medium – someone who channels self-pity
Positive – Beyond the Zero	?
Positively Skewed – definitely in big trouble
Posterior Bayes Risk – the potential for hurting your backside in the tub
Pothenot Problem – when the next rest area is another hundred miles
Power of a Point – they stymie opponents when made in debates or backgammon
Power Tower – utility pole
P Problem – UTI
Prime – a run of six made points
Prime Elements – B, N, K, V, I and others
Prime Factors – most important reasons
Prime Progression – Capitol Steps	?
Prime Rate – about 1 in k ln(10) for k digit integers
Prime Ring – the Mob
Principal Ideal Domain – Garden of Eden
Principia – Fortinbras
Prisoner’s Dilemma – orange dye is both necessary and sufficient for big-house fashion
Prisoner’s Problem – “Who is Number 1?”
Probabilistic Method – cleromancy
Probit Analysis – an ultrasound
Problem of Points – when made too often you are left without a pencil or friends
Problem of the Nile – you’re only fooling yourself
Products – University of Oregon fans
Proof Bullet Proof – a proof that cannot be easily shot down Burden of Proof – dementia Sound Proof – a proof that holds up against even the loudest critic Reproof – when your professor scoffs at your proof and tells you to redo it Proofreader – a math professor Goof Proof – when you make a wrong turn in your proof Proof of Purchase – L'Hôpital’s Rule Overproof – Q.E.D.	?
Proper Fraction – fair division
Prophecy – what students are not likely to be able to do in a large lecture section
Proposition – one side of a debate
Prosecutor's Fallacy – going up against Perry Mason
Prosthaphaeresis – ante –logarithms
Protractor – a staller
Public-Key Cryptology – Tukey Model
Publish or Perish – The Paper Chase
Punnett Square – someone who spends their day thinking up puns
Pure Mathematics – Math You Can't Use
Pythagoras – The Wizard of ‘Om’
Pythagorean – vegetarian	?

Q Click on the ? marks

for more details.

Quadrant – diatribe in the atrium

Quadrature – test driving an Audi with full-time all-wheel drive

Quincunx – a pair of skunks

Quine – phoenix

R Click on the ? marks

for more details.

Raabe’s Criterion – foaming at the mouth
Radical Center – faculty lounge
Radon Measure – picocuries per liter
Ramsey Theory – he is atoning for indicting Dr. Spock
Randomized Block Design – your typical Lego creation
Randomized Responses – fibs	?
Rational Root – a sound foundation
Rattleback – Spinal Tap	?
Raw Score – a method of tenderizing meat
Reciprocity Law – the Golden Rule
Recursive Relation – Aunt Marge casting invectives again
Reduced Echelon – demoted
Reduction Formula – a diet plan
Relative Error – when your in-laws stay too long
Relaxation Method – yoga
Renewal Process – renaissance
Renorming Test Scores – ‘retrograde analysis’
Repeated Measures – Da Capo
Repeated Sum – doubleplus
Repetend – when another goldfish jumps out of the tank
Repunit – a recycled pun
Residue Field – The Waste Land
Restricted Compositions – canons
Retrograde Analysis – ‘renorming test scores’
Retrograde Motion – student’s request to have their exam rescored
Reverse Hex – exorcise
Reverse Mathematics – opsimath
Reversion to the Mean – getting angry again
Rhumb Line – what sailors form while awaiting their tot
Right Annihilator – Al Franken
Right Censoring – apocope
Rigid Body – corpse
Ring Theory – Tom Bombadil is a Maia
River Crossing Problem – seasickness
Robbins Equation – a worm in the beak is worth two in the ground
Roman Numerals – Summa Theologiae
Roman Numerals – restoration of the Sistine Chapel
Roots of Unity – foundation for peace
RSA Numbers – tally marks on the Ochre Stone
Rule of Three – “Then, shalt thou count to three. No more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three.”
Runs Test – 100-meter dash

S Click on the ? marks

for more details.

Saltus – what French fries scream
Scalar – disarray
Schubert Cycle – Die schöne Müllerin
Scottish Book – bistromathics
Seasonal Time Series – ostinato
Secants – what a ship does to get turned around
Secants – what Ann Coulter does
Secretary’s Problem – carpal tunnel syndrome
Self-Avoiding Walk – what you take when you’re really upset with yourself	?
Self Complementary – tooting your own horn
Self Dual – beating yourself up
Self Reference – “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Pogo, Walt Kelly
Self Similarity – synecdoche	?
Semigroup – convoy
Semiprime – the Prime Mover
Series Expansion – when the LCS went to 7 games
Set – awkward moment after being put down but before you take a hike	?
SETL – blackberry
Shadow Reckoning – ‘umbral calculus’
Shamir’s Scheme – The Secret Sharer
Shift Operator – plant supervisor working graveyard
Signum – what you do with checks
Simple Graph – petty bribery
Simple Hypothesis – A Modest Proposal
Simplex – an oxymoron describing anything which is at once simple and complex. For example, love, truth and carbohydrates.
Simpson’s Paradox – Maggie shot Mr. Burns
Simulation Size – The Count of Monte ‘Carlo’
Singularity – 2045 A.D.
Singular Value – Sudoku
Sinh – easily done
Sinical – believing the worst
Slide Rule – no budging
Slope Field – hillside farm
Smith Normal Form – Ohio Stadium
Soma Cube – felicific calculus	?
Space Filling Curve – horror vacui
Spira Mirabilis – Annu’s sister
Spline Smoother – massage
Square the Lune – a Debussy favorite
Squaring the Circle – truing the wheel
Squeeze Rule – from the bottom up
Standard Deviant – your typical reprobate
Standard Error – common mistake
Standard Position – the party line
Static Equilibrium – peacetime
Stepwise Analysis – podiatric research
Strange Attractor – Call of the Wild
Strange Attractor – Where the Wild Things Are
String Model – Twiggy
String Theory – Cordon rule
Subbasis – katabasis
Subcover – lettuce and tomatoes
Subset – a pair of Seawolfs
Subtend – take care of Tridents
Subtracted – nonplussed
Subtracting – dropping sonobouys
Sumset – gloaming
Superposition – “in the catbird seat”
Superposition – building manager
Supremum Limit – omnipotence paradox
Surreal Numbers: How Two Ex-Students Turned on to Pure Mathematics and Found Total Happiness – Donald in Mathmagic Land	?
Symmetry – to climb a tree without branches	?
Syntheme – story line of the Old Testament
Synthetic Division – an invented issue

T Click on the ? marks

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Tac Tix – a tractrix to the complete non-rhotic
Tail Event – wagging
Tautochrone – what Hansel and Gretel did with a good lesson
Taylor’s Series – seamster’s line
Teacher’s Pets – students with Beatitudes (be-prepared, be-attentitive, and be-curious)
Teaching Rules! – 1. Do no harm. (Children are born with sympathy for learning – apathy and antipathy take training.) 2. Leave the world a better place. (Teach the students you have to become the ones you were hoping for.) 3. Inspire courage. (Teach students to be as confident in their abilities and convictions as you are in yours.) 4. Be patient and reward endurance. (Education is a race where the winners are those who never finish.) 5. Make connections. (No student ever went blind by staring at the bigger picture for too long.) 6. Draw distinctions. (An appreciation for differences never started a war.) 7. Nurture criticism. (Good vision involves seeing what isn’t as well as what is.) 8. Aim high. (The goal is to build extraordinary people, not just extraordinary students.) 9. Work yourself out of job. (Teach students how to teach themselves.) 10. Leave them smiling. (The student who has found the way to enjoy learning will never be lost.)
Tensor – more nervous
Terminating Renewal Process – doublespeak for getting canned
The French Mathematician – A Series of Unfortunate Events
The Analyst : A Discourse Addressed to an Infidel Mathematician – The Calculus Affair (Adventures of Tintin)	?
Theorema Egregium – rank theorem	?
Theory of Polls – The Parrot’s Theorem
Thou shall have but three regular tilings of the plane – Torah	?
Three – Lawrence Welk count-off
Three Body Problem – diagramming all forces acting on a given rigid object
TIMSS – Rouse Ball Professorship of Mathematics
Topologically Distinct – holier than thou	?
Total Positivity – Pollyanna
Totative – not too heavy to carry
Transcendental Number – 10
Transfinite Numbers – “to infinity and beyond”
Transient Class – Surveying 101
Transitive Group – nomads
Translation Operator – Oulipo +N algorithm
Translation Operator – Babel fish
Traveling Salesman Problem – Willy Loman complex
Triangle Inequality – when three’s a crowd
Truel – Lionel’s honest brother	?
Truth Table – to put off honesty for a later date
Turing Machine – a bike with many gears
Twin Paradox – Sylvester and Cayley
Twin Primes – Harman Killebrew, Tony Oliva, Rod Carew, Kirby Puckett and Kent Hrbek
Two Finger Morra – how you ask for another shot on the North End
Two-Tailed – bicaudal

U Click on the ? marks

for more details.

Umbral Calculus – ‘shadow reckoning’

Unary – stuffy

Unate – disgorge

Unbounded – From Here to Eternity

Undecidable – aporetic

Unitary Fraction – A Separate Peace

Universal Mathematician – Thoth

Urn Problem – The Leaky Cauldron

V Click on the ? marks

for more details.

Vector Calculus – stoneboat

Versed Cosine – Dudley to Harry Potter

Versed Sine – initial indicator

Vicenary – Utopian

Vièta – what I could have had

Vol(A^c) – ullage

Vulgar Fraction – a nasty break-up

W Click on the ? marks

for more details.

Waring’s Problem – when your pants quit fitting
Wavelet – a little vague
Well Ordered – not “putting Descartes before the horse”
Wetware – raincoat
WFF ‘N PROOF – A fantastic method of proof combining ‘scratch and sniff’ with ‘proof without words’ patented by the research team of Arlo Lipof, a mathematician at the Univ. of Western Ontario, George P. Burdell, an expert in bioinformatics at Georgia Tech, and Dr. Larry Kyle, founder of Genway, ‘the supermarket for genetically engineered foods’. Together they formed the company Maieutica. The strong connection between smells and memory is at the heart of the company’s approach. Their breakthrough was in mapping specific smells to specific memory triggers. Lipof, who is of Greek heritage, believes like Socrates that the human brain innately possesses the building blocks of all mathematical knowledge and that these blocks lie in wait for the right trigger to be expressed. This idea is called maieutics, which roughly translates from the Greek as ‘intellectual midwifery’ and is one of four parts of the socratic method. For Socrates the memory trigger was a series of guided questions. At Maieutica, the memory trigger is a series of carefully sequenced smells determined by their newly discovered mapping. Lipof contacted Burdell with some of his ideas in 2002. At that time Burdell was wrapping up his part in the 13-year Human Genome Project (HGP) and was shopping for his next big project. Burdell was initially skeptically, but he knew of Lipof’s reputation for doing what others thought impossible. (In the late 1980’s Lipof led a South American team, where many fortunes were secured, in what is thought to be the first and only practical application of the Banach-Tarski paradox. A brief sketch about this highly successful business venture appeared in the April 1989 issue of Scientific American.) Lipof then brought Kyle onto the team. Kyle, who is a regular guest on MPR (Minn. Public Radio), is regarded by his peers as a creative genius with a flair for the unusual. Kyle was able to genetically engineer smells based on recent advances in olfaction that have occurred as a direct result of the Human Genome Project. Dilution to threshold ratios (parts of clean air to scented air) as sensitive as 70,000 to 1 were considered. Finally Lipof had a group of graduate students translate Euclid’s Elements into formal proofs, a low level mathematical language that can be likened to machine code in computer science. It was a four year process to map each step of each formal proof to a specific smell at a precise dilution to threshold ratio. But with this olfactory mapping Maieutica has the code for unlocking geometry for the next generation of students who would rather smell than study.	?
Whetstone of Witte – where to sharpen your humor

XYZ Click on the ? marks

for more details.

Yule Process – shop till you drop

Zero Rest Mass – Requiem for a Nun

ZFC Axioms – Foundation Series