Sets, apparently, are "the unifying thread that runs from the first school year right through the dizzying peaks of astrophysics or topology." With a, um, ‘dizzying’ sigh, I now realize that a career in topology is not in my future. Had I only known it were as complex as astrophysics, I wouldn’t have sent off for the correspondence course. Hold on – I have a New Math pamphlet to help me on my topological career! Let’s see: sets… Boys and orange sweaters. It’s a set, or so they tell me….does having hair count? Or pants? I think the condition of having pants on is a seriously important one when considering inclusion in a set. It’s what got me barred from Red Lobster, so I have some insight into the pantsless set. Ah, wait – being pantsless in a group of orange-wearing boys means that the condition of pantification is a subset of the group. Like a walnut. Being pants-free is like being a different kind of nut – I get it – some times you feel like a nut, some times you don’t! The only thing I don’t get is….what does this have to do with first-grade math – or topology? First graders should be wearing pants anyways, and that’s the most important message for parents when it comes to New Math. The followup chapter to Sets are Ordered Pairs. Apparently, Cartesian Pairing* is best applied to connecting The Dover Boys with their fair maidens. Suppose you are listing a name like Pat. It’s difficult to tell whether this is an abbreviation for Patrick or Patricia, Only the order you followed would tell a stranger reading the list which partner wears the skirt. Back to being pantsless again…So, depending on which subset Pat belongs to (pantsed or pantsless) tells which pairing that they belong to? Ah, but which nut are they connected to? They chart out all the possible pairings, making the odds for any specific pairing to be 1/9. The biggest usefulness for this mathematics is card-counting at the gambling table, to calculate the odds of any specific group of cards appearing at any time. They say that, by the 7th grade, students are learning how to represent this algebraically, and the fact I suck at blackjack means they didn’t teach this when I was in school. But – ah – something I can identify with. Next comes the "Base-two system." Next Page >> 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 *which means "oops, I left off the WHERE clause in my SQL JOIN statement."