2015-02-14
Explanation
The Joke
A math teacher tells his student "No, you'll never use math in real life. Ever." This leads to a cascade of consequences shown via newspaper headlines: "Math Literacy Falls to Zero" (with experts noting zero is a really small amount), "Former High School Math Teacher Opens Bank" (promising 10% monthly interest on loans to "keep it interesting"), and "Former Teacher is Now Richest Man on Earth" (with annoying students now poor and sad). In the final panel, a student in the teacher's class asks, "Are we EVER gonna use this in real life?" and the now-wealthy teacher smirks knowingly.
The Humor
The comedy works on multiple levels. First, there is the absurd escalation: a teacher's offhand dismissal of math leads to society-wide innumeracy, which he then exploits to become fabulously wealthy by offering predatory loan terms that a math-literate population would immediately recognize as terrible. The 10% monthly interest rate is outrageously high (equivalent to roughly 214% annual interest), but in a world with zero math literacy, nobody can figure that out. The irony is that the teacher who said math was useless turned out to be the one person who used math the most -- weaponizing everyone else's ignorance for profit. The final panel comes full circle, with the teacher now smugly enduring the same question from students, but this time knowing the answer from personal experience. The comic was published on Valentine's Day, making the choice of a non-romantic topic itself a small bit of Weinersmith humor.
References
The comic satirizes the perennial complaint from students that math is useless in real life, as well as predatory lending practices that exploit financial illiteracy.