My Favorite One-Liners: Part 120

I used these shirts as props when teaching Precalculus this week, and they worked like a charm.

After deriving the three Pythagorean identities from trigonometry, I told my class that I got these hand-made his-and-hers T-shirts for my wife’s birthday a couple of years ago. If you can’t see from the picture, one says \sin^2 \theta and the other \cos^2 \theta.

After holding up the shirts, I then asked the class what mathematical message was being communicated.

After a few seconds, someone ventured a guess: “We add up to 1?”

I answered, “That’s right. Together, we’re one.”

Whereupon the class spontaneously reacted with a loud “Awwwwwwwwww.”

I was exceedingly happy.

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