Wednesday, January 05, 2005
To have a giraffe...
Question from a recent homework worksheet, intended to teach students to convert between different units of measurement:
The tallest animal in the world is the giraffe, which can grow to be 19 feet tall!
How many inches tall is a giraffe? (How many times taller than you is it?)
Some sample answers:
In retrospect, the whole situation seems weirdly reminiscent of the commentary I heard this morning on NPR by my favorite sports writer this side of George Will, Frank Deford. He was speaking about the Yankees and if there will be a point of diminishing returns in their quest to maintain their evil empire. The long and short of it was whether or not Yankees fans could ever really be happy if they kept on cornering the market on strong players. In his words,
Victory would never be enough.
If you lose, you're even more dissappointed because you're supposed to win.
And if you win, what's the point?
Question from a recent homework worksheet, intended to teach students to convert between different units of measurement:
The tallest animal in the world is the giraffe, which can grow to be 19 feet tall!
How many inches tall is a giraffe? (How many times taller than you is it?)
Some sample answers:
Now...the really funny thing is not so much the answers, but rather the fact that most of these answers were on multiple papers. If one person thought the giraffe was 95 feet, 2 inches then that would be just one more amusing anecdote from my Crazy Homework File. But three different students with that exact answer? And the likelihood was that the 45 foot, 2 inch giraffe was the result of a misread 9. They don't even try to hide that they're cheating. And they're cheating to get wrong answers...And my favorite:
- 95 feet, 2 inches (the giraffe that ate Las Vegas!)
- 45 feet, 2 inches (the giraffe that started large fires in Reno)
- 19 inches (midget giraffe!)
- 19,000 inches (that's 1,583 feet for those of you keeping score at home!)
- If I was 6 feet, it would be 13 feet taller [than me].
In retrospect, the whole situation seems weirdly reminiscent of the commentary I heard this morning on NPR by my favorite sports writer this side of George Will, Frank Deford. He was speaking about the Yankees and if there will be a point of diminishing returns in their quest to maintain their evil empire. The long and short of it was whether or not Yankees fans could ever really be happy if they kept on cornering the market on strong players. In his words,
Victory would never be enough.
If you lose, you're even more dissappointed because you're supposed to win.
And if you win, what's the point?
