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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Huron Expositor, 1960-10-27, Page 10gi,JR014 EXPOSITOR, SEAFORTH, ONT., OCTOBER 27, 1960 Mathematics for the Married Man By Gisela Helbig, x. -B Marriage is a very serious un dertaking. When a man's head is befuddled by what be calls love and others call temporary insan ity, he is apt to do anything, up to and including committing sui cide, or binding himself to a wo man forever and aye. This can lead to serious consequences—his life is troubled .by extra income tax deductions, the budget, and a complete lack of freedom. Of course, there are compensations— he never has to worry how to spend his money, because his wife re- lieves him of it as soon as he re- turns home on pay-day; he•doesn't have to learn to write a cheque because the bank account is al- ways overdrawn anyhow, and he begins to regard deafness as a blessing, thus saving the cost of a hearing aid. Let us 'briefly consider woman- kind as a whole. Believe it or not, some women do have good quali- ties—beauty, thrift, the inability to talk, training 'in income tax forms, budgets, bookkeeping, and general office work, less intelli- gence than the man who plan to marry them, good taste in ties, common sense, the gift of NOT making Christmas presents for their husbands (you know the kind ,—sweaters without a head -hole, socks that aren't the same size and/or color, and gloves with six fingers), a knowledge of mathe- matics, but less than that of men —all the qualities that make up an ideal wife. For the sake of argument, let us assume- that there are twenty qualities a woman could have, and fifty per cent of all women have any one of theiii:'-lf you follow this through, you will see than twenty- five per cent of all women have any two qualities, twelve and a half per cent have three, six and a quarter per cent have four, three and 'one-eighth per cent have five, one and seven -sixteenth per cent have six, twenty-three thirty- seconds of a per cent have seven, twenty-three sixty-fourths of a per cent have eight—until you ulti- mately arrive at the percentage of .00015, or one out of approxi- mately 648,576 women. How many men are lucky enough to get the right one? When a man begins to get light-headed and the world be- gins to spin, he has no judgment, and the only way he can tell whe- ther the object of his affection is perfect is' to marry her and find out. Using this trial and error method, he would actually have to marry 648,576 women. If a man lives for 70 years, he has 36,817,200 minutes to breathe. By division, •you may calculate that he would have to marry• one woman every 51 minutes. Of course, he might be lucky, so that the 648,575th wo- man may be it, or he might have to continue to 648,577. However, this is idle speculation, for this business of getting married every 51 minutes is purely impractidal unless you happen to be Solomon. The point of all this is: All men who have escaped until now would use their mathematical brains to imagine 648,576 women in a line, and the problem of choosing the right one—and stay single. , '''But, taking another look at my title, I see that this should really be addressed to the poor, unfor- tunate wretches who didn't have the chance to read my warning be- fore they took the fatal plunge. My purpose is to briefly outline a few of the various uses of mathe- matics to a man who has been hitched up and is now trotting in double harness. Theof•etically, he should only have to pull half 'the weight as he did before, but then, theory isn't practice. Depending on the wife and him, he will have to pull anywhere from no weight at 9ii; to twice or -even three times as much as before. Mathematics will help him to lighten this load. Remember Einstein? He was the fellow who thought up the Theory of Relativity, stating that if you travel at a speed greater than that of light, time will begin to go backward. Had he not him- self been a henpecked husband, he would never have had the fore- sight to see this great release for. man. Already men have foiled women by exceeding the speed of sound, so why can't they go even farther and exceed the speed of light? After all, 186,000 miles per second is only 669,600,000 miles per hour, and some of the drivers fly- ing low in their cars come fairly close to this speed. Just think what that "would mean! You could play poker with the boys until four o'clock in the morning, and still arrive home, in time for supper. Or, better still, you could arrive home before you leave. In this way you would be happy, and your wife would be happy, too. This would also be very useful if you were late for work, or you wanted to get away from your wife for a while—all you'd have to do is go back to a time before she was born. Plain, ordinary arithmetic is an invaluable asset to a married man. By attacking calculating system- atically, there is no chaos and confusion when the whole family sits down and multiplies 1761/2 by 223/4, and divides the whole result by 17, and each member ends up with a different answer. Hanging pictures, deciding how many wieners are needed for, three small, slat medium and 2 large children, 'two adults, one dog and 14 eats for a meal painting, car- pentry ---for these things you must know that 3 times 2 is NOT 5. Sup- pose you were hanging wallpaper. You would have to calculate the number of rolls of wallpaper need- ed ("Oh, about six rolls in this corner, four theta,and 16 over there, two more right here, but th purple fleas instead of green stripes Mullet/it see --oh, 23 rolls of ceiling paler and 92 spools of border. -that'll acme tar -+leg's see —")-the amount Of paste, (`rt got three packages because I didn't have any more money—I saw the darlingest little hat—") the amount of water necessary for the paste, ("Oh, dear, John, the paste is too thin, and we haven't any more, and can't get any because it's Wednesday afternoon—") to say nothing of all the measuring that must be done to match the pat- tern, fill odd nooks and crannies, and get the paper on right side up. Any intelligent man makes use of statistics. There are now sta- tistics concerning everything—the life -spans, character traits, eating habits, sleeping habits, driving hab- its, °gesticulations and voices of men and women. For instance, if you have been out too late, and you know that your wife will be a little disagreeable if she wakes up when you thieve in the back door, you consult the statistics con- cerning sleeping habits. They will tell you that a person is the most deeply asleep around 2 a.m. The natural time to come home, then, is at this time. - Geometry is very useful for the father. It will help him to decide bow to divide three pieces of pie among eight quarelling children; how to fit dishes together so that there will be a maximum load with a minimum of breakage; and how to fold diapers. He will be more efficient in hanging, ironing and folding clothes. Almost everything he does involves goemetry. Many a father bas unwittingly inserted a pin into hischild while trying to fasten a diaper. With a few sim- ple calculations this can be avoid- ed. If the thickness of the diaper is one-eighth inch, and the safety pin is one inch long, two thick- nesses of diaper would be one- quarter inch thick. If the pin is put into the diaper at an angle of 900, the pin would go;;one inch below the surface of the diaper, and 4 inches of this length would enter the baby. If it is put in at an angle of 450, it would only go '. inch below the surface. At an angle of 221/20, the pin would go A inches below the surface, and the baby would be unhurt. If, how- ever, the pin is inserted at an angle of less than 111/20, it would fail to catch the bottom layer. Therefore, the angle at which the pin must be inserted is greater than 1110 and less than 221/20. If the operator has studied geometry at all, it will be an easy -matter for him to -put the pin in at the proper angle. The law of probability is very interesting. It has already been used to find the chances of getting a perfect wife. It can be used for many other similar calculations. One that concerns a husband most of all, is the chance of his wife coming home with the car un- scathed and no ticket. If there were 20 things which could hap- pen to wife and car, and a 50 per cent chance of any one of them happening, the chances of her hav- ing a perfect day would be the sarhe as those of having a perfect wife—one out of 648,576 times. In other words, if she took the car out every ,day, she would drive for 1800 year before she managed to get home without any trouble whatsoever. Of course, some wo- men are better or worse drivers. Perhaps the most important ap- plication of mathematics is the art of logical argument and reas- oning. Women don't reason; they just think. That's why they're such poor chess players. Let us look at an instance which shows the powers of carefully organized argument. It is Saturday morn ing. Smith wants to sleep in be- cause he doesn't work today. At 6:30, his wife begins to dig her elbow into his ribs. Wife: Get up, Henry, and get breakfast for. me. Smith: Huh? uh—aaaah! (Turns over and goes back to sleep.) Wife: Henry! Now come, on—I work hard all week waiting on you, and this one morning you should be able to do this one little thing for me! Smith: Now listen here, I work hard all week to provide for my family, and therefore I should rest in my spare time, Wife: Hub! Now get up! Smith: Now listen here, you're supposed to obey me. Now you get out of bed! Men wear the pants around the house. I am a man. Therefore, I wear the pants around the house! Understand? Wife: Sure, dear—and I'll tell you which ones to wear. Now get upandget breakfast—andI want you to take off the storm window in Nelly's room, and put it on Pete's window—and— Smith (weakly): Yes, dear. . oops, there must have been a slight miscalculation here. But the point is not lost. Did you no- tice how Smith's wife did not back up her statements with facts? That's a woman's weakness! There are many combinations of these uses of mathematics. For example, when Johnny starts school, you may use mathematics to calculate the chances of get- ting a perfect teacher, to deduce why Johnny onlyhad a mark of three in that spelling test when Jimmy Brown got 95, to reason With your wife and the teacher, and Johnny, and to argue with your neighbor about the respective merits of your children. At the risk of straying out of the field of mathematics and into that of sci- ence, I would Iike to mention, as a comfort to the disillusioned father, that, by the Atomic Theory of the Structure of Matter, those grey cells in Johnny's brain are basically composed of protons, electrons and neutrons, exactly the same things as make up the wood in his desk. In this. short time I have only been able to skim over the surface of a vast and fascinating field. My hope is that intelligent mar- ried men will make a wide study of the infinite number of possibili- ties which may be found in mathe- matics. Good luck! McKILLOP BUSY BEAVERS The second meeting of •the Mc- Killop Busy Beavers was held at the home of Eleanor Keys, Satur- day, Oct. 22. The roll call was an- swered by what you would appre- ciate in a guest room. The hostess- es for the next meeting will be Lynda and Mrs. G. Papple, Mrs. R. M. Scott talked on "En- tertaining a House Guest." Elean- or Keys and Janet McKercher gave a demonstration on arranging flowers. An informal invitation and an informal reply were writ- ten by all club members. Mrs. Papple discussed invitations and replies. Mrs. Scott and Mrs. Pap- ple demonstrated Packing a suit- case correctly. Marguerite Scott and Lynda Papple repeated the demonstration, The roll call for the next meet- ing is to be "The type of refer- ence' file I have chosen." The home assignment is to decide on the method of filing and purchase PUBLIC OFFERING TOWN OF SEAFORTH, ONTARIO (For Seaforth High School District) 53/4% non -callable debentures To be Dated October 15, 1960 MATURITIES AVAILABLE To Yield 5 3/ 4% Year Price 1966 to 1980 $100.00 These debentures are part of an issue of $180,000 Town of Seaforth, Ontario, issued on behalf of the Seaforth High School District. Debentures will be available in denominations of $1,000 only with provision for registration as to principal only. We, as principals, offer these debentures if, as and when issued and accepted by us, subject to their validation by the Ontario Municipal Board, for delivery on or about November 15, 1960. Orders are subject to allotment and prior sale. Orders will be accepted at the Office of The Secretary -Treasurer Seaforth District High School, W. E. SOUTHGATE, Seaforth, Ontario Telephone 334 GAIRDNER & COMPANY LIMITED 200 QUEENS AVENUE, LONDONrONTARIO "TELEPHONE GE 8-2161, LONDON ST. COLUMBAN Mr, and Mrs. Martin Purcell and family, Kitchener, with Mr. and Mrs. -Thomas Purcell and Mr, and Mrs. Jack McIver. Miss Nell Doyle, London, with Ted Doyle. Leonard Maloney, Lucan; Jack Malone, Guelph; Sheila Malone, Mary Cronin, Beatrice Maloney and Catharine Ryan, Kitchener; Helen Maloney, Anne Maloney and Cleo Bowman, London; Pauline Malone, Stratford, at their homes. Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Smith, Kitchener, with Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Purcell. Pat Sloan, Collingwood, with Mr. and Mrs. James Sloan. Mr, and Mrs. John O'Leary and baby with Mr. and Mrs. John Coyne. Miss Mary Melady and Jack Melady, London, with Mr. and Mrs. Maurice Melady. Miss Marion McIver, Detroit, and Mrs. Tom McIver and chil- dren, Toronto, with Mr. and Mrs. William McIver. CRANBROOK Rev. D. Leslie Elder, of Sea - forth, Interim Moderator, conduct- ed Communion and Baptism ser- vicel in the Cranbrook Presbyter- ian Church Sunday. Joining the church at the service were Mr. and Mrs. Stuart Stevenson. Chil- dren presented for baptism were: Rosanne Engel, daughter of Mr. and Mrs° Gordon Engel; John Bradley, son of Mr. and Mrs. Jack Knight; Heather Dawn, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Joe Smith, and Frederick John, Thomas, Sharon Eleanor and Anna Lee, children of Mr. and Mrs. Stuart Stevenson. required materials for it; begin collecting materials for files, and work on record book. A game was conducted by Amy Stewart and Roba Doig. This was followed by a delicious lunch. SEAFORTH MERRY *MAIDENS ADVANCE IN STUDY PROGRAM The second meeting of the Sea - forth Merry Maidens was held at R. MacGregor's. ,Mary MacGre- gor read the minutes of the last meeting and the roll call was an- swered. The next meeting is to be held at Broadfoot's. Notes on Hospitality, Responsi- bilities of a Hostess the Guest Room, Invitations and the Guests, McKILLOP WMS The McKillop WMS of First Pres- byterian Church held their Thank - offering meeting h the church hall on Thursday afternoon. Mrs. R. E. McMillan presided in the absence of Mrs. Helen McMillan. Mrs. James Keys graciously wel- comed the guests. who were pres- ent from the Northside ,WMS and the Barbara Kirkman and Senior Auxiliaries of First Church. After the singing of a hymn, the Scripture lesson was read by Mrs. Francis Coleman. Miss Jennie Hogg led in prayer, and a lovely duet, "The Master Stood in His Garden," was sung by Rev. D. L. and Mrs. Elder, accompanied by Miss Jessie Fraiser on the piano. Mrs. J. L. Bell, with a few well- chosen words, introduced the guest speaker, Mrs. (Rev.) Hugh-Wson, of Shakespeare. Mrs. Wilson ehose "The Lord is My Shepherd" for her splendid address and gave the audience much food for thought, and in closing left them with the challenge; Do you know the Shep- herd's Psalm, or do you know the Shepherd? Mrs. James F. Scott extended the appreciation of those present to the speaker and others taking part in the program. The offering was received by Mrs. Harold Agar and Miss Jean Scott. Following tkie singing of another hymn, Rev. I1) L. Elder closed the ,meeting with prayer. were taken and discussed. Group work consisted of how to pack a suitcase when travelling. Home assignments were: Think about files and start collecting for it, and be sure to keep record books up• to date. The roll call for the next meeting was to bring record book and write an invita- tion. The third meeting was held 'at Mrs. J. Broadfoot's on Oct. 14. Glenyce Jewitt read the minutes of the last meeting and the roll call was answered. Notes on shar- ing the family meal and table set- ting and service were taken and discussed. In group work the girls were taught how to fold a linen table- cloth and how to set a table. Home assignments were: Plan meals for family for one day, practice table - setting and service, and read something interesting to talk about. The roll call for next meeting is "One fluty of a hostess to her guest." Duff's, McKillop . Has Anniversary Rev. Evan McLagan, of Bel - grave, preached anniversary ser- vices at Duff's Church, McKillop, on Sunday, when there were large congregations at both services. In the, morning he chose for his sub- ject, "Millstones," and in the eve- ning, "Lord or Liar." Mrs. R. S. McKercher assisted the choir of young people in the morning with a solo; While the Junior .Farmers male quartette sang two numbers at the evening service. Organist was Mrs. A. Scott. Rev. W. H. Summerell was in the pulpit also for the evening service. 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