The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1880-06-10

A Mathematical Mystery.
It Is often and incorrectly said that
women have no aptitude for mathe-
mates. So far is this from the truth
that there are certain departments of
mathematics in which women are vast
II more skillful than men,. If q man
ls asked how much it costs him annual
~ to smoke four cigars day at fifteen
cents each. he win reply, 20! perhaps
. hundred dollars or so," which is man
hestly incorrect;1 whereas if the same
question Is asked his wife, she will in
stantly answer. that her husband wastes
about seven hundred dollars a wear in
smoke. Captious critics NAV point out
that this sum is too large, but it must
be conceded that, while there is a little
surplusage in the wife's calculation, she
does not commit the fatal error of un-
derestimating the amount. In accord
ance with the principle that the greater
includes the less, her calculation is es-
sentially right, whereas the smokers
calculation is utterly and hopelesslv
wrong. The skill of women in hand
ling figures is also shown every Sunday
in the year. When ON Sunday evening
the ladies of the family bring out their
particular religious newspaper, and
grapple with those amazing problems
which begin, II am composed of thir-
ty-five thousand letters; my 1, 9, 365,
II, 4, II, A is an Amalekite plumber"
the male members of the family circle
know that, though they could not solve
the problem even with the aid of six
calculating machines, the women will
solve it before they 60 to bed if it takes
them all night. In these and several
other branches of mathematics woman
is easily supreme, and it is hence an er-
ror born of ignorance or malice to &C.
cuse her of q want of mathematical
genius. IT'S
When, however, we come to measu-
ration, we suddenly find the limitations
OF the female mind. A deep-rooted
hatred OF all accuracy in measurements,
or, at all events, q total inability to
comprehend the yard-stick or the tables
of dry and wet measure, is one of the
most prominent characteristics of the
sex. No woman, for example, can
form any correct idea of the distance
from her house to any other geographic
cal point. If she wishes to go to any
place she firmly believes that it is only
"a few steps," no matter if it is in re-
ality miles away; and if she has, by
force of circumstances, been compelled
to walk unwillingly from, say, the
Fourth to the Sixth Avenue, she will
subsequently maintain that she has
"tramped all over CREATION" and is of
right completely tired to death.
Every man who has intrusted to q
woman the work of manufacturing q
shirt has had painful experience of her
inability to comprehend the importance
of accurate measurement. Mr.. Smith,
for example, permits Mrs. Smith to
make a new shirt, to be modelled pre-
cisely after an old one, which measures,
say, fifteen inches around the neck.
When the new garment is completed,
MIR. Smith finds that it chokes him, and
he calls his wife's attention to the fact.
She declares that it measures precisely
the same as the model, and appealing
to a tape-measure in proof of her asser-
ton, finds that the new shirt measures
only thirteen inches around the neck.
In these circumstances a male shirt
maker would confess that he had made
a mistake. Not so Mrs. Smith. She
exclaims, with every appearance of
triumph, "There! what did tell YOU?
One is almost exactly the same size as
the other. There isn't two inches diff
ference between them" Nothing could
more forcibly illustrate woman total
incapacity to grasp the importance Of
accurate measurements. A being who
believes that thirteen-inch band will
fit fifteen-inch neck with as much &C.
curacy as if the band were two inches
longer is born without any sense of the
value of linear measure.
As rule, women decline to recognize
the authority of yard-sticks, measuring
tapes and other standards, and place q
pathetic faith in their personal fingers
and THUMBS. They have constructed
for their own use certain tables which
pretend that the upper joint of the
thumb is exactly an inch in length, and
that the width of three fingers is an inch
and half. These are the only meas.
ures which they will use when seeking
to ascertain the length of piece Of
piping-cord or the width of q skirt
breadth. 1t is needless to say that they
are thus led into constant error. The
female fingers and thumbs are not con-
slant quantities, so far as their length
and breadth are concerned, and to make
them standards of measurement is as
absurd as it would be to assume that the
human foot is always twelve inches in
length, whether it be the New York OF
the Chicago foot.
What is very odd is the fact that in
the department of cookery women make
an elaborate pretense OF their regard
for careful measurement. They have
rules for finding the exact quantity Of
each article that enters into the compo
sition of any particular dish. For in.
stance, their cooking iturgies prescribe
that in making cake one must take q cur
of flour, six cups of butter, two dozen
eggs, three cups of salt, teaspoonful oi
indigo, tablespoonful of starch, and
tree cups of molasses. But do they ever
follow this rule? 1t is notorious that they
pay no attention to it. When woman
undertakes to make cake sne takes what
she calls "enough" flour, and to this
she adds ga little" indigo, starch and
salt, and stirs into it abou' as much but
ter and molasses "as is needed" o.
course the result is always unforeseen.
It may turn out that the compound thur
made is cake. and it may prove to be
rice pudding. The woman herself has
not the least idea what it will be. With
the printed rule for cake manufacture
lying before her one would suppose that
it would be impossible for her to pro
duce anything but cake, but in actual
practice she utterly scouts the rule, and
makes her mysterious compound by the
light of Nature, and humb1y trusts that
it will not come out of the oven as sau-
sages or boiled ham. Why women have
this antipathy to measurements of al
kinds is a mystery. They can add OF
subtract; they can multiply and they
can divide; but here their capacity fol
any mathematical truth ends. There
is, indeed, as Sir Isaac Newton sadly
remarked, something very mysterious
in women, and the less we try to find
e <ho ottor-N y Yiso1oo