Posted by Michael N. Marcus on April 13, 2008, 6:27 am

Help me out, kids. I vaguely remember a scam that someone pulled in a Molly Malone math class, with the alleged discovery of an old paper found stuck in a book at the Yale Library written by John Quimby detailing the discovery of the coconant, a new trigonometric function to complement the cosine and cosecant. Do any of you remember the details, or the perpetrator(s)? I never had Malone for a teacher, so my knowledge is second-hand. It's vital that we 64-ers document the details, because phantom trigonometrist John Quimby is nearly as important as our phantom classmate Steve Schmuck. They both deserve to be on our version of Mount Rushmore, along with LeVine and Frehse.

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Posted by Alan Disler on April 19, 2008, 10:45 pm, in reply to "Quimby Theorem?"

I confess. I cannot for the life of me remember the other co-conspirators (Howard Shrobe, Ken Dardick, Mark Rosenberg???), but the idea was to have one of us claim to have found a note in an old mathematics text written by a John Quimby, who had formulated what came to be known as The Quimby Constant, which was indicated as 38Q. This student, who I can picture but cannot remember, presented this to Miss Malone's Algebra class, whereupon Miss Malone went down the hall to another teacher's classroom and brought her back to marvel at this discovery.

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Posted by Michael N. Marcus on April 19, 2008, 11:29 pm, in reply to "Re: Quimby Theorem?"

WOW I'm impressed, Dis. Obviously I knew about the heist of the Frehse foof-knocker, but I had no idea you had a part in the Quimby scam. You deserve a plaque in the Freedom Shrine Room.

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Posted by Alan Disler on April 20, 2008, 3:25 pm, in reply to "Re: Quimby Theorem?"

I think it was Richard Shenfeld who agreed to claim he found the document and reported it to the class.

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Posted by Alan Disler on April 20, 2008, 3:34 pm, in reply to "Re: Quimby Theorem?"

And it was Miss Fox, Miss Malone's friend down the hall, who was shown the "document", a development we hadn't planned on. She must have known it was a cruel hoax. In fact, Miss Malone retired soon after the incident. I guess we maybe influenced that decision.

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Posted by Michael N. Marcus on April 20, 2008, 8:33 pm, in reply to "Re: Quimby Theorem?"

Do you remember anything about the coconant?

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Posted by Alan Disler on April 20, 2008, 10:01 pm, in reply to "Re: Quimby Theorem?"

Possibly. Not sure.

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