"
"Read it again. It says 20 square feet."
"No, no, 20 feet square."
He glared at me in indignation. "What's the difference?" he said.
I sighed and began to explain. I went on explaining. If there had not
been other things to do than teaching cultured and educated
schoolmasters, I might be explaining still.
Yes, I resented this; and I resent now the matter-of-fact way in which
we accept the ignorance of mathematics shown by our present
teachers--the press. At every election in which there are only two
candidates a dozen papers discover with amazement this astounding
coincidence in the figures: that the decrease in, say, the Liberal
vote subtracted from the increase in the Conservative vote is exactly
equal to the increase in the poll. If there should happen to be three
candidates for a seat, the coincidences discovered are yet more
numerous and astonishing. Last Christmas a paper let itself go still
further, and dived into the economics of the plum pudding. A plum
pudding contains raisins, flour, and sugar.
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