Instructify

I probably don’t have to tell you what a wonderful show The Simpsons is and always has been, but now I have another good reason to be a die hard fan of the show. SimpsonsMath.com explains and explores all of the arithmetic that has been featured on the show, and frankly, it’s quite a lot. As it turns out, Executive Producer Al Jean has a Bachelor’s of Mathematics from Harvard, so it’s no surprise that plenty of math references and jokes have made their way on to the show in its many years on the air. This site features those references and gives the mathematical backgrounds of the brains behind the show as well as plenty of activity sheets to give your students an engaging look at math from America’s favorite animated family.

If you are as big a Springfield buff as I am, you’ll no doubt remember most of these quotes, but there are some wonderful diamonds in the rough. Here’s an example from the site:

Teacher at gifted school: So y = r^3/3 and if you determine the rate of change in this curve correctly, I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

[Class laughs.]

Teacher: Don’t you get it, Bart? Derivative dy = 3r^2 dr/3, or r^2 dr, or r dr r. Har-de-har-har! Get it?

–JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

SimpsonsMath.com