Geometry Make-Up Class

Thursday, September 29, 2005 Geometry Make-Up Class “(P AND Q) OR (P AND R) ├ P AND (Q OR R)1 (1) (P AND Q) OR (P AND R) (ASSUMED)2 (2) P AND Q (ASSUMED)2 (3) P (2, &E)2 (4) Q (2, &E)2 (5) Q OR R (4, orI)2 (6) P AND (Q OR R) (3,5,&I)7 (7) P AND R (ASSUMED)7 (8) P (7, &E)7 (9) R (7, &E)7 (10) Q OR R (9, orI)7 (11) P AND (Q OR R) (8,10, &I)1 (12) P AND (Q OR R) (1,2,6,7,11,orE)” “Hello, Houston! We have a problem! It seems the aliens we have encountered speak in proofs. Can you interpret? I repeat, can you interpret?”-Lydia Tschappler in an urgent call to earth from Mars. Does the first paragraph look readable to you? To an unpracticed mind (which would include the Honors Geometry class before September 22, 2005), it certainly looks like a foreign language, and is definitely from outer space (or so many of us think)! To learn this new language, we had a crash course on Thursday, September 22 so we could interpret what our geometry book had to say. Needless to say, crash courses often cause a great deal of smoke to emanate from our ears, as was the case during the make-up class. Mrs. Lin, the teacher of the influential Honors Geometry class, went for a vacation to Hawaii (we think she went to Mars to get the info. for the lessons) the week before, so we missed a day (gasp!) of crucial training for this course. Since Mrs. Lin had just come back from Mars, we had to go to her house for the make-up class, as she had not acclimated well to the atmosphere at Credo the previous day. Everyone in the Honors class came to the Geometry Make-Up class because we really wanted to decode what the aliens had to say. Of course, SOME of us just wanted to get a good grade, but we won’t mention any names. Matthew Hall, Caleb Khazoyan, Jessica Lin, Susanna and Joanna Griffith, Lydia and Allegra Tschappler are all part of the Honors Geometry Class. We all arrived at the Lin home at 5:00 pm, except for Jessica, who was already at home. As we were walking down the stairs, the Math Counts class was swiftly leaving the classroom. Our teacher, alias: Jenna Lin, very patiently showed us how to use these proofs to show what on earth (or elsewhere) the aliens were talking about. She also let us correct the quizzes she had given earlier, as we wanted to have a better background before tackling the alien language.After Mrs. Lin had handed out quizzes to check, we started asking questions about the problems we had struggled with or asked questions about why we missed certain problems, which Mrs. Lin answered very effectively.Then Mrs. Lin taught us proofs such as Or Introduction (orI), Modus Ponendo Ponens (MPP), Modus Tolendo Tolens (MTT) and Reduction ad Absurdum (RAA). See, doesn’t that look like Alien? Unfortunately, it’s Latin, which some of us are attempting to learn so we can understand the aliens from Saturn. Since we are students of Latin as well as students of Proofs, our homework was to go home and figure out what the words in the proofs were. It seems we have stumbled across a rare breed of aliens that speak a mixture of Latin and Proof. It will take a great deal of work to decode what these creatures are saying, but I’m sure it will be very rewarding!