The Chronicle of Higher Education notes a geeky but funny prank pulled off by a professor at Biola Univesity. Biola, you may recall, is an evangelical Christian school in Los Angeles whose present name is an acronym of its former one: The Bible Institute of Los Angeles. It espouses creationism.
The Chronicle‘s words are indented:
April Fools’ Day can be treacherous, especially in academe (I’m lookingatyou, student newspapers). But I’m happy to report that pulling off a good, wholesome joke — one that doesn’t make light of both racism and genocide — is possible in an academic setting.
Cue Matthew Weathers, an assistant professor of mathematics and computer science at Biola University, who on Wednesday delighted his students with an impressively choreographed — and exceedingly nerdy — piece of pedagogy:
As Weathers posted on the YouTube video, “I played a trick on my math class for April Fool’s Day. In this one, I’m showing a ‘homework help’ video that gets some trigonometry wrong. How embarrassing!”
Here it is, and it’s quite clever:
It’s worth noting that Mr. Weathers is no amateur, to either YouTube or technological high jinks. He’s pulled several similar April Fools’ stunts in the past, all viewable on his user page.
h/t: Robin
That actually really was well done.
…one still wonders, though, how many digits he uses for π….
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OMLolCat. That was so brilliant! This is going to my academic buds.
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That was really good. This year, I liked Amazon’s retro look and Charlie Stross’ adjustment to fine literature, in rebuttal to CleanReader (yet another incredulous addition to restrain freedom of speech):
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/04/a-major-ebook-announcement.html
Excellent! He put a lot of work into that.
From the balcony he looks a bit like Mr. Bean.
How clever! And that would’ve taken a lot of work!
The real joke is BIOLA University. BIOLA = Bible Institute of Los Angeles.
Maybe the whole enterprise is a prank. That would explain a lot.
That was great! I watched the 2011 one too, which was also really clever. I’ll be checking out the others later – what a find!
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Very clever indeed.
LOL!
Would that actual math classes were so entertaining.
Well done.
For a university class, though, they seem to be at a rather basic level of trigonometry?
” . . . delighted his students with an impressively choreographed — and exceedingly nerdy . . . .”
Yes, very well done.
I wouldn’t have known it was “nerdy” but for the reporter giving her/his opinion – er, uh, I mean – reporting that “fact.”
I confess my ignorance/incompetence; how does the reporter know that this practical joke is “nerdy,” let alone “exceedingly” so? Because it involves some significance STEM competence?
I wonder what a very well-done “non-nerdy” (“jocky”?) practical joke would look like. I perceive the professor’s offering to be at least a little non-nerdy/jocky (if not “cool”), what with his sporting a semi-backward baseball cap.
Happily, the connotations of “nerd” and “jock” have been changing rapidly the in the last few years. In some cases I think the roles have almost reversed, in terms of social approbation.
“In some cases I think the roles have almost reversed, in terms of social approbation.”
Some significant, heartening evidence for that would be, as one example, the day that (the early-to-mid 60’s) “The GE College Bowl” returns to the airwaves, with results being discussed and dissected in the mass culture and media.
Wouldn’t that be great?!
“Jeopardy” is as close as we come these days, I guess.