The World's Spookiest Math Stories
Eight math horror stories: a proof that vanishes, a statistically significant haunting, a lost reflection, a why-wolf, the Count teaching combinatorics, harmonic-series torture, and the √(sin²+cos²) nightmare.
Content note: Panel 3 shows knives (mild horror).
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Free for classrooms, worksheets, slides and other non-commercial use under CC BY-NC 4.0, with credit to Ben Orlin.
Cartoon by Ben Orlin, Math with Bad Drawings. https://cartoons.mathwithbaddrawings.com/2017-10-25-the-world-s-spookiest-math-stories/ (CC BY-NC 4.0)Transcript
[1] 'It follows trivially,' I said, leading my friends to the proof. They stared. 'There's nothing there.' The page was empty, except for some obvious nonsense.
[2] They said the house was haunted. We scoffed. To be safe, we compared its spooky creaks per night to a control house: n = 365, mean 23.7 vs. 16.4, p < 0.0001. We screamed.
[3] I looked in the mirror. It was empty. 'Your symmetry group is collapsed. No reflection for you anymore.' I turned. It was another me, a symmetric me, with a long thin knife in each hand.
[4] The classroom was packed; no one moved; eyes open, no pupils. 'DON'T READ THE PROBLEM,' the chalkboard read. 'RUN.' 'C'mon, it's elementary probability,' I said, opening the book. 'It can't be that hard…'
[5] Bitten by a philosophy major in college, the mathematician became not a werewolf but a why-wolf, howling about Platonism and the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics.
[6] 'Welcome to Combinatorics,' the Professor said. 'Ah ah ah.' (A Count von Count-style vampire.)
[7] My captors put a ½-pound weight on my back, then ⅓ pound, then ¼ pound… 'I'll tell you anything! Just stop tending towards infinity!' 'It's too much!' 'Or it will be, eventually!'
[8] 'I had the worst nightmare. On the board, a student wrote…' sin²θ + cos²θ = 1, so √(sin²θ+cos²θ) = √1, so sin θ + cos θ = 1. 'It was you…'