Peanuts by Charles Schulz for October 11, 2014

Like the true answer of three times zero, Sally is a complete zero.

Overly-eight…my new favourite word!! Must use it in conversation! Twiddley-two is way better than “umpty-jillion.”

@Sally_Brown

Er… NO. Here’s another Pie… (SPLAT!!!) IN YOUR FACE!!!

Now again… Three times Zero…?? (Readying ANOTHER Pie…)

Sally would have trouble with the “ones”.

Three times zero is 000 (hugs)

If the answer isn’t zero, it shouldn’t be that hard…

I guess this was before the days of pocket calculators. Or pocket calculator apps, either.

This is homework, which implies that she is learning it in school…in which case, she should know it. ESPECIALLY the zeros.

I think she has the qualifications for a future congresswoman!

3 × 0 = 0!

Sally was always unintelligent, but she was a cute character back then. In the later decades, she became irritating, especially when she treated CB and Snoopy disrespectfully.

Me either. Languages, words, are my thing. So of course because I aced English and French and Spanish, they put me in Algebra class. Oh yeah—that worked. Nooot! They would show me something in class, I would feel like I understood it, but when I got home to do some homework it had all fallen out of my brain.In college I tried to sign up for Basic Collegiate Mathematics (basic math for dummies) and got the wrong course. Found myself in Fundamental Mathematical Ideas…first day of class: Euler diagrammes, probability and chance! Well, at least I failed big.

Well, she seems to have mastered her imaginary numbers.

Not hard? You tell me which of eleventy-twelve, fifty-quillion, overly-eight and twiddely-two is closest to 0.

Where is she getting these numbers?

3*0 = 3 for sufficiently large values of 0.

Your phrase “never bothered to teach me any other way” really resonated. I thought I was stupid through all of grade school ( 8 years for us.) I finally realized in high school that I actually had something. When my son was in junior high he ran into scholastic trouble, and I met with one of his teachers who was the head of the History department. He told me that 99% of people who become teachers learn, and therefore teach, in only one of the several identifiable ways there are to learn and that, therefore, many students are left out in the cold to get it or not. What a pity to think of what you and I might know about math if we’d just had different teachers.

If you have 3 of something and multiply by 0, you still have 3, don’t you?? How can you startwith three and have nothing???

Personally, I thought it was either eleventeen or thirty-twelve.

Good one.