Overview

Mathematicians use their own special language to communicate. Using symbols and pictures can sometimes help us get our message across in the most succinct way possible, and they sometimes give us a chance to make the reader laugh...

Symbol Stories

Symbols take the place of a word or words, letting us communicate messages in fewer characters. Sometimes, the ambiguous nature of a symbol (or even its specificity) can provide a second meaning that gives an additional layer of meaning to our statement. A symbol such as the + sign has a very specific meaning in the mathematical statement  1 + 3 = 4. Compare this to the use of the + sign in this equation.

Math Comics

What makes a comic strip funny? In this unit of study and the related Journalism Day activity students first study what makes a math-related comic strip funny, and then produce their own. See this example

The idea here, surprisingly, is not math, but language arts. Although the jokes require a familiarity with mathematical concepts, such as reality, rationality, and other mathematical properties, it is the the wordplay (and essential incongruity) that is important: