• Prandom_returns@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    31
    ·
    4 days 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
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    32
    ·
    edit-2
    4 days 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
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    3 days 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.