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I was watching this movie called Cube last night. It was pretty good. Canadian. It had Nicki DeBoer in it, who is notable to me because she was on Kids in the Hall, and specifically because I stood next to her during the first KITH show I saw during my first KITH tour.

Anyhow, these people are (seemingly) randomly put inside a gigantic cube full of rooms that are booby-trapped, and they have to find their way out. Only it's not so random, because you see that each of the people has a specific function in the group. There's Angry Guy, who gets everyone moving and beats people up if he thinks they're out of line; Paranoid Lady, who's also a doctor and is useful for providing both conspiracy theories and medical advice; Mysterious Guy, who turned out to have designed part of the cube and knows a little about it; Retarded Guy, who turns out to be an idiot savant with an important talent; and Math Girl, who's a high-school student with an impressive mathematical facility. DeBoer plays Math Girl. So I'm caught up in the drama of the story, and a lot of the drama centers around Math Girl discovering mathematical things about their prison that may lead them to escape. And we're getting to a big climactic scene, and I'm all caught up in the drama, and she and Mysterious Guy have both figured out something Very Important That Is the Key To Their Escape. And they both look at each other and shout, "PERMUTATIONS!"

And as much as I love brainy movies where the key to the whole adventure is that some nerd is using their nerdiness to get everyone out of a jam, this just irritated me because it reminded me of what a terrible math teacher I have and how if he'd just explained permutations in a straightforward manner, I wouldn't want to tear my hair out.

I pretty much kinda understand them now, by the way, and combinations too, but I still don't know to goddamned apply them to goddamned vague word problems. If they would just teach you exactly how to identify a problem, and what formula to plug in, math would be okay. But it's vague in all the wrong places, math is.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 2:04 AM | shower me with attention