Math Is Fun

You may have received a mailing from Macalester that poses a question. The letter reads:

If the figurative “distance” between Jim’s “ideal” college and College A is five times the square root of the “distance” to College B, which college should Jim attend and why?

And on the envelope the problem is posed using a formula:

Some recipients of this letter have commented that the distance formula does not seem quite right. So we’d like to explain ourselves.

The equation on the envelope is meant to represent “five times the square root of the distance between colleges A and B”.

If we were writing an equation to represent “the distance between colleges A and B”, we’d write:

But we want the expression to represent five times the square root of the distance between colleges A and B. So we:

1. Add a 5 at the beginning of the expression, meaning “five times” and
2. Put the distance formula in parentheses and raise it to the ½ power to mean “square root of”.

Why would we send out a letter that’s so confusing? That’s a reasonable question. The letter is meant to be a little bit over the top and have some fun with standardized test questions. Whether we have succeeded (and whether it’s possible to have fun with standardized test questions) is up to you.

And if you made it this far, it’s a good bet that you’d benefit from learning more about Macalester. Expressed as a formula:

u^Macalester + (possibilities * ∞) = macalester.edu/reply