JUMP TO PART 2

1. Last week, someone at my job printed out an inspiring story and posted it on the bulletin board. The inspiring story was about a poor Scottish farmer who saved a nobleman's son from drowning. The Scotsman refused the nobleman's offer of a reward, so the nobleman insisted on paying for the education of the farmer's son. The Scotsman's son grew up to be Sir Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin, which years later saved the life of the nobleman's son -- Sir Winston Churchill.
   
   I immediately spotted this story for a fake. So I went to Urban Legends Reference Pages, printed out the well-researched and well-written refutation, and posted it on the bulletin board beneath the spurious story. When I walked past the bulletin board an hour later, both the story and the refutation had disappeared.
   
   
2. Last week, I was reading this post at Mirthful Ones, in which Sadie mentioned quadratic equations. I know a thing or two about quadratic equations, so I posted this comment:

   ...to solve an quadratic equation of the form ax² + bx + c = 0, use this formula: x = [-b ± √(b² - 4ac)] / 2a.

   Irish Lad, amorous associate of Sadie, responded with:

   ax² + bx + c = 0 is not a "solvable quadratic equation". It is a second degree polynomial equation. The quadratic equation is x = [-b ± √(b² - 4ac)] / 2a. Just technicalities, but surely you were just wanting to see if anyone noticed the transposition. Or maybe you did some Friday sex including 69 and are just ass-backwards as a result.

   I lashed back with:

   According to Wikipedia and Math World, "quadratic equation" and "second degree polynomial equation" are synonymous. The formula x = [-b ± √(b² - 4ac)] / 2a is the quadratic formula.

3. I was drinking beer and playing poker on Friday with the young adult group from my church (great church, the Unitarians -- they let you drink and gamble!), when somebody was dealt a natural straight. "What are the odds of that?" the lucky girl wondered as she raked in her chips.
   
   Well, let's figure it out!
   
   There are 10 different straights: A2345, 23456, 34567, et cetera, up to TJQKA. Each straight has 5 cards, each of which can be dealt in 4 suits. That means there are
   
   10 × 4 × 4 × 4 × 4 × 4 = 10,240 ways to deal a straight including straight flushes, which we should subtract out. There is 1 straight flush for each of 4 suits for each of the 10 different straights. That leaves us with
   
   10,240 - 1 × 4 × 10 = 10,200 ways to deal a straight. There are
   
   52 × 51 × 50 × 49 × 48 / 5! = 2,598,960 ways to deal 5 cards from a 52-card deck, so the odds of getting a straight are
   
   10,200 / 2,598,960 = 1 in 254.8 deals.

PART 2
I've always liked being right. When I was a kid, my parents bought me a book titled Encyclopedia Brown's Book of Weird and Wonderful Facts. That was maybe the biggest mistake Mr. and Mrs. Trout ever made. For the next few years, the most common phrase to emerge from my mouth was "But my book says..."

"But my book says Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier, not Satchel Paige."

"But my book says 'A.D.' stands for Anno Domini, not 'After Death.'"

"But my book says the North Star is only near the Big Dipper, not part of it."

I corrected my parents, my sister, my teachers, and the pastor at church. I had the steel-trap memory of a seven-year-old with no weightier concerns in life than the Little League schedule. Resistance was futile. If anyone dared contradict me for a second time, I would march to my room in a huff and return moments later with My Book, pointing to the relevant passage.

No need to call Dr. Freud to decipher my behavior. I was an skinny, awkward kid who didn't play well with others, and proving that I knew more than other people was a cheap and easy way to obtain approval and feel better about myself.

As I grew older and developed the desire to fuck girls, I learned to control my impulse for correcting other people's mistakes. Mostly. My friends who read this will chuckle and say:

"What about the time my girlfriend said Tommy Hilfiger went on Oprah and said he didn't want blacks wearing his clothes, and you took her email address and sent her a refutation the next day?"

"What about the time we went camping, and you wouldn't shut up because the Hershey's bars I bought were the wrong thickness for s'mores?"

"What about that time I brought the new guy to poker night, and he thought his 6-3 beat my 8-4 in Texas Hold 'Em with a board of KK776, and you posted about it at the Recpoker bulletin board to prove I won the hand?"

Yeah, I still like being right, and I still like to show off that I'm right. I'm a skinny, awkward man who feels uneasy around others, and trying to impress people by proving that I know more than they do is a cheap and easy way to feel better about myself. Never mind that years of experience have taught me how pathetic and unsatisfying it is to behave this way.

I flaunt my command of intellectual flotsam and jetsam because I think it makes me better than other people. But I'm wrong.

+posted by Lawrence @ 8/07/2004 11:59:00 PM