When I first learned about infinity I thought it was totally the coolest idea ever. Zero was almost as cool because when you divide by zero, you get infinity. (Also zero was neither positive nor negative, but unique and totally its own thing -- how cool is that?) The wussy teachers and the math books used to say that dividing by zero was "undefined," but I thought that was some kind of a cop-out -- if you graphed it out, it obviously went to infinity. Why didn't they just say so?
And for some reason the teachers never really wanted to talk about infinity much -- they just looked uncomfortable and changed the subject. What were they hiding? I was sure there was some kind of conspiracy going on.
A childhood belief about counting
others believed things like this
- I believed that our teachers lived at school. They were teachers--they had no reason to leave :)(Anon
- I used to believe that teachers built missiles when they went to the teachers lounge.— HOLLIS
- I believed that female teachers got to choose if they wanted to be called "mrs. or miss" — Jenna
- I thought all the teachers slept at school.— Ryan
- I thought all teachers in school were married to each otherAnon
- When I was little, I used to love dinosaurs, and thought that they didnt poop because they were too cool....— Melanie