Refund - a farce in one act

The drama is about disgruntled former school student who claims the school did not teach him anything or prepare him for life in the real world, thence entitling him to a full refund of tuition. The play then uses the Mathematics teacher to turn the tables on him through 2 Math questions: one easy and one hard. The easy question? “If we represent the speed of light by x, and the distance of the star Sirius from the sun by y, what is the circumference of a one-hundred-and-nine-sided regular polyhedron whose surface area coincides with that of the hip-pocket of a State railway employee whose wife has been deceiving him for two years and eleven months with a regimental sergeant-major of hussars?” The correct answer? “two thousand six hundred and twenty-eight litres, and not twenty-nine.”. The play then does a pirouette on the hard question (which reminded me of the third wish in the Deal-with-the-Devil tales).

The “Math content” here is, of course, questionable. The ability to do correct addition in the end reminded me of the woman whose daughter I once tutored in business mathematics. She told me that for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out what good Math was in daily life. After my failed attempt to explain to her how her daughter’s education was giving her an analytical thought process, I ended up giving her the examples of checking grocery bills, estimating driving times to destinations and evaluating appropriate tip amounts. The final denouement in this drama was in a similar vein.