First, the good news. Those of us who are mathematically challenged may soon be protected by the legal system. The bad news is that it may be much too late to convince our grade school teachers that our math deficiencies didn’t make us complete losers in life. Many of those teachers have undoubtedly departed for that great classroom in the sky. According to a recent article in U.S. News and World Report, a lawyer in Trento, Italy, recently argued that his client, a high school girl, suffered from "irreversible psychological pathology" or "math phobia." The student faced the prospect of repeating her junior year because she failed math. In most public schools in our country, being forced to repeat the junior year might be viewed as cruel and unusual treatment. In addition to receiving a second dose of American literature, starting with the humorous, offbeat writings of the early colonists, the student would be required to take part in another magazine sales fund-raiser to cover the costs of a junior-senior prom. Worst of all, it would mean having to decorate a gymnasium with crepe paper streamers and helium-leaking balloons, a traditional responsibility of 11th graders, for a second time. An Italian regional court ruled that the student’s condition made it impossible for her to study or master math and advised the school to move her directly into her senior year. Many of us could have used a similar defense. This is a positive step for those of us who still recall the deadly "timeses," also called multiplication tables by those in the know. The truth is, I’ve been waiting for more than half a century to impress someone with my "two times" and "three times," the only timeses that really seemed to take hold. No one has ever asked me to calculate the volume of a cylinder or to determine when a train traveling 60 mph will arrive in a certain city. Had we been computers in that time before computers, our math modems would have been missing. Regardless of our shortcomings, we made it through life by either marrying someone good at math or by buying a reliable hand-held calculator. We may not be able to cut recipe ingredients by a half or double a recipe of lasagna without help, but our cooking efforts somehow turn out, thanks to helpful terms such as pinch, smidgeon and dollops. While we may use these words rather creatively, there are certain math words we may never understand. Pardon this old joke, but we may truly believe that a polygon is a dead parrot. A triangle can be any combination of relationships with three people involved. We all know that hypothesis is the oath taken by doctors. Pi is a clever word used to reflect the smaller portion of pie you should eat when you’re on a diet. Radius are the best tires for a northern climate. A diameter may be the best way to measure a dia. A prime number is a really good number, much like a prime cut of meat. A winning lottery ticket may be said to have a prime number. A tangent means suddenly going off in another direction while you’re talking about something else. Finally, "angle" is often used as an alternative spelling for "angel" by those who are spelling challenged and haven’t had their day in court.
