3/19/2004 09:08:00 AM by Rob

I have actually taught in college

How are your brackets? The wrong mediocre Illinois-based basketball team won yesterday, so that should give you a clue as to how dogfucked I am.

For all of you with a degree from Northern Illinois University, time to quit feeling all high-n-mighty, for it is possible that I, the Uncouth Sloth, may have taught you Business Statistics at one time. So the math teacher in me wants to write a post today.

For those of you who have kids, who whine "Why should I learn math?" I was reminded of this as I drove in today.

On the radio, the announcer said "DePaul's Drake Deiner was 7-for-10 from the field, and a perfect 10-for-10 from the line for 28 points as DePaul won in double overtime..."

Anyway, what I wanted to know was: "How many threes did he put up?" The announcer neglected to mention it, and if you are not somewhat familiar with high school algebra, you will never know. (Unless you look up the box score on the web, you fucking cheater. I wanted to know right there and then.)

You might ask "Who gives a titty-fuck?" Well, that's just the kind of thought repression that Bush, Cheney, and the Thought Police are just COUNTING ON to hold us down, mister man. When you're stuck in traffic for two hours, you sure as hell can't exercise your body, so you better be able to workout your mind.

So let's set up the problem. Say the number of two-point shots Diener put up is X. The number of threes, which we want to solve for, is Y. Since he was 7-of-10 from the field, the first equation we have is:

X + Y = 7

OK, now we know he had 28 points from the field. The number of points from two pointers can be expressed as the number of two point shots he had, X, times 2. The number of points from three pointers is Y times 3, follow? Plus, he had 10 free throws, each counts as one. So, the second equation is:

2X + 3Y + 10 = 28

We all hated word problems as kids, but what you didn't realize was: without word problems, and without decent announcers who give you all the facts, you can't make head or tail about sports. So when you were given this problem on a pop quiz:

Solve for Y:

2X + 3Y + 10 = 28
X + Y = 7

What you were really finding out was how many trey-balls Drake Diener threw in last night. We all have heard both Bob Costas and Billy Crystal tell the stories on why they did so well in fifth-grade math, because they were big baseball fans, and what is a batting average, but long division? They knew that 3 divided by 7 was .429, because that's just a batting average.

Anyway, taking the second equation, if we subtract Y from each side of the second equation, we find that X = 7 - Y. Big deal, you say, what's Y? Who cares? You can substitute (7 - Y) everywhere you see X in the first equation. So, instead of:

2X + 3Y + 10 = 28

You can write instead:

2(7-Y) + 3Y + 10 = 28

Lots of people have made the mistake of not going there, because they think this makes things more complicated, but look again. Whereas before, you had X's and Y's, now you just have Y's. And that makes things a LOT simpler.

Now let's work the rest of the problem:

2(7-Y) + 3Y + 10 = 28
2(7) - 2(Y) + 3(Y) + 10 = 28
14 - 2Y + 3Y + 10 = 28
(14 + 10) + (3Y - 2Y) = 28
24 + 1Y = 28

Now, subtract 24 from each side:

Y = 4

So, Diener tossed in 4 three-bombs. Since X = 7 - Y, then X, the number of two-pointers, is 7 - 4 = 3. And I leave it up to you to plug X and Y in the second equation.

I hope you had fun with today's math lesson. It helps to know a little math to make sense of the gibberish you read in the paper. It doesn't do squat to help with NCAA bracket picks. That's just pure hell.

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