【日记】Wanted: A Few—or a Lot of—Good Men and Women with Fingers and Toes# MiddleSchool - 中学时代
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Wanted: A Few—or a Lot of—Good Men and Women with Fingers and Toes
First, the good news: My little daughter, all of 4.8591 years old, is
showing great interest in the field of mathematics and is now doing
additions and subtractions involving numbers going all the way up to almost
100. Now, the bad news: With that development, we are running out of
fingers and toes in the family as study aids. Anybody with countable
fingers and toes are hereby cordially invited to come over and lend us a
hand, so to speak.
As a matter of fact, we once ran into a similar situation before, when the
bigger numbers in the math questions exceeded 20—or 10 when she had shoes
and socks on. Being a natural problem-solver, however, she managed to
overcome the obstacle back then when she discovered that her big brother,
with full sets of fingers and toes of his own, comes in very handy for
digital reinforcement.
As she ventures deeper and deeper into multi-dozen territory, the family has
finally reached its numeric limit as far as human capacity goes. We have
thought about enlisting the canine and feline members of the family, but
that has turned out not to be very practical because, as you can imagine, it
is rather difficult to get those guys to sit still and stick out the
required number of digits for any meaningful duration of time.
So, if you are able and willing to help, please drop me a line and specify
the total number of digits you can contribute to the cause. At this point,
I am inclined not to limit the number of volunteers we will be enlisting;
after all, we do want our little munchkin to be able to calculate up to the
thousands and millions some day.
Now, what is really important here is for all of you to take this
announcement very seriously. For God's sake, the future prowess of a whole
new generation of human beings in mathematics is on the line, and that ain't
no laughing matter!
First, the good news: My little daughter, all of 4.8591 years old, is
showing great interest in the field of mathematics and is now doing
additions and subtractions involving numbers going all the way up to almost
100. Now, the bad news: With that development, we are running out of
fingers and toes in the family as study aids. Anybody with countable
fingers and toes are hereby cordially invited to come over and lend us a
hand, so to speak.
As a matter of fact, we once ran into a similar situation before, when the
bigger numbers in the math questions exceeded 20—or 10 when she had shoes
and socks on. Being a natural problem-solver, however, she managed to
overcome the obstacle back then when she discovered that her big brother,
with full sets of fingers and toes of his own, comes in very handy for
digital reinforcement.
As she ventures deeper and deeper into multi-dozen territory, the family has
finally reached its numeric limit as far as human capacity goes. We have
thought about enlisting the canine and feline members of the family, but
that has turned out not to be very practical because, as you can imagine, it
is rather difficult to get those guys to sit still and stick out the
required number of digits for any meaningful duration of time.
So, if you are able and willing to help, please drop me a line and specify
the total number of digits you can contribute to the cause. At this point,
I am inclined not to limit the number of volunteers we will be enlisting;
after all, we do want our little munchkin to be able to calculate up to the
thousands and millions some day.
Now, what is really important here is for all of you to take this
announcement very seriously. For God's sake, the future prowess of a whole
new generation of human beings in mathematics is on the line, and that ain't
no laughing matter!
