Showing posts with label Pet Peeve. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pet Peeve. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Pet Peeve

This is going to make it very obvious that I am very nerdy, and perhaps show that I spent too much time on Facebook and MSN, but I can't take it anymore.

The equality sign (=) is not a synonym of "is".

We've all seen them before:
"Mexico = awesome"
"Halo 3 = awesome"
"Spiderman 3 = lose"
"Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Dickwad"



I don't understand what would cause someone to misuse mathematical notation like this. It's almost as if they are trying to seem clever by using math symbols, but have no idea what the symbols actually mean.

In case you don't see the problem here, equality is a symmetric relation – meaning that if x equals y, y equals x.

Mexico being awesome does not imply that awesome is Mexico. Think about it. If "Mexico = awesome" and "Halo 3 = awesome" then "Mexico = Halo 3".

The use of arithmetic is even worse. With a little bit of rearranging:
"Audience = Total Dickward – Normal Person – Anonymity"
What the fuck does that even mean?

Please. People already have a hard enough time understanding basic mathematics. Don't exacerbate the problem by abusing mathematical symbols.