• Prandom_returns@lemm.ee
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    4 months ago

    “As verbs the difference between sheared and shorn is that sheared is past tense of shear while shorn is past tense of shear.”

    Thanks, internet, you’re very useful.

  • 9point6@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Holy shit, I did my equivalent of this class over 2 decades ago and I remember this bloody joke.

    Whoever wrote that book has got a lot of mileage from it

    Edit: oh the screencap is older than a decade lol

  • LostAndSmelly@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    I just checked and every single textbook I own that contains a reference to this transformation uses an image of a sheep. Sadly all of my textbooks are in English. If I had any relevant texts in German or Spanish I doubt that they would makes this connection.

    On an less relevant note one of the books introduces the idea of change of basis with a joke about labeling axes and has several different types of ax with corresponding labels attached and I find that to be a much worse joke.

    • dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de
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      4 months ago

      I guess because it’s absurd you’ll remember it easier.

      Kind of how people can recall a deck of cards by placing a person doing an action to an object (PAO) in familiar places. It’s the absurdity that makes you remember.

    • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      In English the tool for chopping down trees is spelled axe. Just letting you know since you’re multilingual and I assume English isn’t your first language.