Some Have Brains and Some Haven't

Pooh is the favourite, of course, there's no denying it, but Piglet comes in for a good many things which Pooh misses; because you can't take Pooh to school without everybody knowing it, but Piglet is so small that he slips into a pocket, where it is very comfortable to feel him when you are not quite sure whether twice seven is twelve or twenty-two. Sometimes he slips out and has a good look in the ink-pot, and in this way he has got more education than Pooh, but Pooh doesn't mind. Some have brains, and some haven't, he says, and there it is.

-A. A. Milne, Winnie-The-Pooh

A Fable

Once upon a time there was a teacher who set his class an examination to perform. And when the youths had finished he marked their scripts. But at the end of his labors he found that, by evil chance, he had worked with a total of 99. And, being an industrious man, he converted all the marks into percentages.

So it was that a pupil with 58 marks gained 58.585858 . . . per cent and a pupil with 73 marks gained 73.737373 . . . per cent, and others likewise.

And when the time was come that he should return the scripts to his class, being an honest man as well as industrious, he confessed what he had done and delivered to them their marks in the form of percentages.

Until he came to one named Smith whose work was perfect, to whom perforce he had awarded the percentage 99.999999 . . . per cent.

"So, Smith Minor," saith he, "though I find no fault in you, yet your percentage falls short of the full total of 100. What say you?"

"Sir," saith Smith Minor, moved to anger, "I call that the limit."

-Fantasia Mathematica, ed. Clifton Fadiman, 294.

The Unfortunate Topologist

A burleycue dancer, a pip
Named Virginia, could peel in a zip;
But she read science fiction
And died of constriction
Attempting a Moebius strip.

-Cyril Kornbluth, Fantasia Mathematica, ed. Clifton Fadiman, 266.

There Once Was a Breathy Baboon

There once was a breathy baboon
Who always breathed down a bassoon,
For he said, "It appears
That in billions of years
I shall certainly hit on a tune."

-Sir Arthur Eddington, Fantasia Mathematica, ed. Clifton Fadiman, 267.

For All Practical Purposes

A professor, asked what he meant by the phrase ["for all practical purposes"] explained:

"Suppose all the young men in this class were to line up on one side of the room, and all the young ladies on the other. At a given signal, the two lines move toward each other, halving the distance between them. At a second signal, they move forward again, halving the remaining distance; and so on at each succeeding signal. Theoretically, the boys would never reach the girls; but actually, after a relatively small number of moves, they would be close enough for all practical purposes."

-C. Stanley Ogilvey, Fantasia Mathematica, ed. Clifton Fadiman, 284.

St. Supercilia

St. Supercilia, born in Paris about the year 1400, was a maiden of remarkable erudition, who steadfastly refused to marry anyone who could not defeat her in open disputation. When the best scholars of all the universities in Europe had tried and failed, her unworthy father brutally commanded her to accept the hand of a man who, though virtuous, sensible, and of a good estate, knew only six languages and was weak in mathematics. At this, the outraged saint raised her eyebrows so high that they lifted her off her feet and out through a top-story window, whence she was last seen floating away in a northerly direction.

St. Supercilia is the patron of pedants. Her feast, Eyebrow Sunday, falls in Cacophony, between Lowbrow Sunday and Derogation Day.

-Dorothy Sayers, "Selections from The Pantheon Papers," The Whimsical Christian, 5-6.

How to Slice a Cake

“We may liken our statistics to a large crumbly loaf cake, which we may cut in slices to obtain easily edible helpings. The method of slicing may be chosen in different ways—across the cake, length-wise, down the cake, or even in horizontal slices, but only one method of slicing may be used at a time. If we try to slice the cake more than one way at a time, we shall be left with a useless collection of crumbs.”

-Lawrence H. Longley-Cook , “An Introduction to Credibility Theory”