Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for April 24, 2017

Calvin will eat the brains of math nerds.

The living dead only eat flesh

Next question: “How long will Calvin get away with this?”

The question didn’t say whether the 3 points were in a straight line or in a triangle….Makes a big difference.

Simple really

I never could “get” those kinds of problems!

Wait…is the brain show and tell arc over? Just like that? Did I miss something?

First: BC=5 AC=2BA, insufficient data; second: Watterson majored in Political Science.

Let’s rephrase this for Calvin. The female brain is twice as far away as the male brain. If the female is 5 feet away from the male, how far do you need to shuffle to get to the male brain?

Yup. Maths is evil… It creates deadites…

If A, B, & C are on a line AC is either 10 or 10/3 (which is ~3.33). If the three points are on a plane then there are an infinite number of answers between 3.33 and 10.

Wow! I forgot about the zombie mode. Calvin was wayyy ahead of his time for the latest zombie fad. Good stuff!

All solutions are on a circle. If B is at 0,0 and C is at 5,0 then it’s a circle with a diameter of 6.67"

Goto http://www.wolframalpha.com/examples/Math.html and enter this into Plot sqrt(x^2 + y^2) = (sqrt( (5-x)^2 + y^2))/2

OMG! Not Math Class!!!

Solutions are: 10 or 1.66 if all points are on a straight line (ABC or BAC).

NAH!!

If Calvin put as much ingenuity into his homework as he does in finding ways to avoid it, he’d be Stephen Hawking.

My brain was not geared for math.

Calvin has become 66 meanwhile!!

I think this arc (about a year or so into the strip) was where C&H began to hit its stride.

In this I don’t blame Calvin one bit. Those story problems are murder! One reason to be so glad to be out of school.

glad to observe that so many (but bit all) C&H readers are mathematically adept.

I would say that the answer is 10 inches.

I think I just solved it. Assuming that the points are on a straight line, we have A-B-C, where each dash represents 5 inches. Therefore, A—C=10 inches.

Grrahh… must eat brains to solve math question…

What’s the point?

there isn’t enough information in the question to solve the problem. It’s easy to solve if the 3 points are arranged in a straight line (the answer would be 10) But it doesn’t say that, if the 3 points are arranged in a triangle then you would need to know at least one of the angles of the triangle to solve the problem.

Just like “I before E except after C” or whatever.

That is obviously a American thing because I have never heard that kind of nonsense in the UK.

Haha.

xxx

This is a clever puzzle. The square of AC follows an elliptical path as the angle between AB and AC varies. HIgh school math but a little beyond poor Calvin.

That won’t work on College.

The answer is 10 inches if you assume you go from point A to point B to point C in a strait line. We see that Calvin does not go from point A to point B or anywhere in a strait line.