A Turn of Phrase

Dish out slips of paper to the group. Each member thinks of a common phrase and writes it on the slip. Fold it up. Throw it into the middle of the table with the rest. Mix them up. Each member picks out a slip.

We now each have a phrase on which to base a vignette. Take that phrase literally and see where it takes you.

Here’s my attempt. Can you guess what the phrase is?

He decided he was a genius. He sat in the classroom denouncing Pythagoras theorem.

“This shouldn’t work,” he told his teacher. “It shouldn’t add up the way it does.”

The teacher tapped the triangle on the whiteboard. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “You don’t need to ask why it works. You don’t need to work it out. If you accept it, you’re half-way there.”

John looked at the triangle. His future hinged on his ability to grasp mathematics- the art of thought, of cognition. I must do this, thought John.

He closed his eyes. He had no idea who Pythagoras was. He sounded Greek. He imagined he’d be ancient- Greece has its ancient history. His mind soared.

He saw himself flying over open scrubland in baking heat. In the distance: a white foaming border of surf. Below him: stone statues of dis-robed people and elegantly carved columns.

From the horizon, a giant line appeared. It moved, tipping upward, revealing a flat triangle. Cheesy eighties electronics filled the desert. It was right-angled, like the shapes Pythagoras obsessed over. A synthesised whooshing announced the appearance of two purple squares on the shorter edges of the triangle. They were labelled “A” and “B”.

An orange square burst into view on the edge of the hypotenuse, labelled “C”, as the electronica hit a rousing crescendo. An LCD display ran through the Greek sky.

A SQUARED + B SQUARED = C SQUARED

He got it.

 

Did you get it? Probably not. I didn't exactly stick to the script. The phrase I got was…

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

I really could not think of anything. I just had to write something as quickly as possible. Maybe daydreaming and electro-pop can help people grasp mathematical concepts. But again, probably not.