Skip to main content
Search IntMath
Close

Tom Lehrer’s New Math video

By Murray Bourne, 21 Sep 2007

This week's Friday math video is a classic from Tom Lehrer, a singer-songwriter who was active in the 1960s.

He graduated from Harvard University and taught mathematics at MIT, Harvard and Wellesley, but was better known for his political satire.

From Wikipedia:

When asked by an Australian newspaper about his silence since the 1960s and his legacy now, he commented that his particular brand of political satire is more difficult in the modern world. "The real issues I don't think most people touch. The Clinton jokes are all about Monica Lewinsky and all that stuff and not about the important things, like the fact that he wouldn't ban landmines... I'm not tempted to write a song about George W. Bush. I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirise George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporise them."

[Update: The original Tom Lehrer movie was taken down. Sorry about that.]

See the 1 Comment below.

Leave a comment




Comment Preview

HTML: You can use simple tags like <b>, <a href="...">, etc.

To enter math, you can can either:

  1. Use simple calculator-like input in the following format (surround your math in backticks, or qq on tablet or phone):
    `a^2 = sqrt(b^2 + c^2)`
    (See more on ASCIIMath syntax); or
  2. Use simple LaTeX in the following format. Surround your math with \( and \).
    \( \int g dx = \sqrt{\frac{a}{b}} \)
    (This is standard simple LaTeX.)

NOTE: You can mix both types of math entry in your comment.

top

Tips, tricks, lessons, and tutoring to help reduce test anxiety and move to the top of the class.