You want a really sick Maths joke?
Try the education at just about any modern Secondary School - it really is a joke!
Without a calculator most 18 year olds can't work out the square of 9 nor the square root of 81 - but they still get A's or A*'s.
citation?
Interviewing and testing candidates for jobs in the Accounts department of my last employer.
Other questions on which students with (just for Trippy) As (and this, according to Trippy is how multiple A is written - it looks like the word "As" to me) and A*s failed
What is 12.5% of £ 50.00?
If paid 10% interest per annum how much would £ 50 be at the end 3 years?
It was also found that four out of every five candidates could not accurately crosscast a 12 column 30 line spreadsheet without a calculator, and one out of every ten got it wrong even with a calculator.
It is really a damn shame because they were all good kids whose teachers had seriously let them down by teaching them to pass exams and not how to do maths.