DO
1.Carry paper
at all times. If mathies don't have paper then who knows what they'll write
on.
2.Carry a compass and a map. (Need I say more...)
3.Familiarize yourself with the literature influential to molding the
mathie's psyche: The Hitchhikers' Guide trilogy ( you can skip the fourth
book in the series: the one about love), Monty Python Movies and Star Trek
movies and episodes are a plus.
4.Learn some math buzzwords and how they're grouped together. The actual
mathematical concepts are irrelevant; the purpose of knowing is to get the
mathie's jokes. Here is a starter kit:{whole, natural, rational, irrational,
integer}, {complex, imaginary, real, i}, {set, union, subset, intersection}.
5.Try to avoid references to the real world, this will only confuse your
mathie.
6.Go to parties, movies and other fun stuff. Mathies aren't nerds, contrary
to popular belief.
7.Ask for help with your math courses. This is a prime benefit of dating
a mathie. Don't miss out! (However, when being helped never say, "I just
want to know how to do it, I don't want to know what it means.")
8.Learn to play bridge. This is probably what the mathie had in mind
when s/he asked you if you wanted to be partners.
9.Make sure to inform your mathie that your idea of fine dining is not
the Virginia Kettering Cafeteria.
10.Remember where the car is parked; I suggest the method of carrying
around a Polaroid and photographing the car in relation to the parking lot.
11.When your mathie invites you to a gathering of other mathies be prepared
not to understand a single word that they are saying, even if they use all
English words. -- welcome to mathese.
DO NOT
1.Announce "Puns
are the lowest form of humor."
2.Go shopping for food, especially without a calculator! The mathie will
ensure that you save that indispensable extra 3.33 cents by buying the super
jumbo box of baking powder, even if it takes 3.33 hours to figure it out
(and 3.33 years to use that much).
3.Go out to dinner with a huge group of people and upon the arrival of
the bill ask the mathie to figure out who owes what to whom. Otherwise lots
of money will have changed hands, the restaurant will be beginning to close,
and you will be further away from solving who owes what to whom than when
you began. (In fact to be on the safe side, do not even let the mathie see
the bill. You don't need a manual check of the computer's or cash register's
arithmetic abilities.)
4.Say, "Well, you are kinda' cute, but I always thought engineers were
better looking."
5.Allow the mathie to bring his/her laptop on a date with you. You +
mathie = company (fun). You + mathie + laptop = disaster date!
6.Get an E-mail address. If you have one, don't tell the mathie what
it is. Otherwise you may never receive a telephone call, letter or card
from the mathie ever again. Some how 'I love you' just doesn't have the
same resonance on a computer screen.
7.Be impressed with your mathie's knowledge of the Greek alphabet. Probability
is that s/he doesn't speak a word of it.
8.Confuse the mathie's vocabulary with your vocabulary. HP does not mean
steak sauce to a mathie, chips do not go with fish, nor does reading the
news have anything to do with Globe and Mail.
9.Ask a mathie to divide a cake or other non-parallelogram shaped food.
Assuredly all the pieces will be exactly even, but you won't want to serve
the oddly shaped creations to guests.
10.Ask a mathie, "So what are you going to do with a degree in math?".
For some reason, this question tends to annoy them.
11.Expect your mathie to add, subtract, multiply, divide, or count with
any speed or accuracy. (If this really bothers you, go out with a nice dependable
HP calculator.)