Mathematics and Clergy

The Vicar and the Virger are standing in front of the church looking up at the West door, over which is inscribed the year when the church was built.

Vicar:- "It's funny, but that number is the sum of the squares of the ages of my cousin's two daughters"

Virger:-"I can't tell you their ages uniquely. Are they the same age?"

Vicar:-"If I was to tell you that, you'd be able to do the problem, so I'm not telling you."

Virger:-"Aha Vicar, now I know uniquely" and he tells the Vicar the ages of the cousin's two daughters.

When was the church built?

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credit David W Masser, Nottingham, 1970s. 

Students

This is an observation about students. I seem to remember in the 1960s being considered to be a very bright student. This was probably because I always tried to appear to understand everything that was said to me in tutorials, and to express my own insights in my own words.

Recently some students have not understood why they are marked down for plagiarising other sources. With the time pressure we are all under nowadays, there is every motivation to submit pre-cooked work for assignments; it saves effort and in its own way requires careful selection and assembly of material. Academics have been doing this for years, with their long lists of sources, references, and bibliographies in published articles. The rules of the game are that one gives credit to other people for their contributions.

Plagiarism by students wears down the academics, who instead of providing helpful feedback, spend hours searching for likely prime sources for what they are reading. Often the work goes through undetected, to be quoted anew by later plagiarists.

Eventually, people ask about everything, "where did that come from?" which is unsettling if the work in question really IS novel and original.