Humor – Page 7 – Mean Green Math

Last semester, as I spend untold hours editing the closed captioning automatically generated by YouTube on the math videos on my YouTube channel, I got a crash course on the capabilities and limitations of this system. This crash course was perhaps not legally necessary but extra work that I took on because a student with a hearing impairment was enrolled in my class, and I wanted to ensure that the review videos that I provide to my students were accessible to him also.

I think the resources offered by my university are fairly typical to ensure that instructors are able to reach all students and not just those who don’t have audio/visual impairments. After discussions with the cognizant people at my university, I’ve made a few conclusions:

Mostly by accident, my videos are ADA compliant since I made the decision to both write out the solutions and also talking through the solutions.
While the automatic closed-captioning provided by YouTube may be minimally compliant with ADA, I’m not sure that a student with a hearing impairment could always follow the transcriptions due to a number of errors.
Aside from punctuation, capitalization, and the occasional homonym (e.g., right vs. write), YouTube does a pretty good job at transcribing ordinary speech.
Naturally, YouTube’s automated closed-captioning is not to blame when I don’t enunciate clearly, have a rabbit trail of thought but then have to backtrack, use poor grammar, make a outright mistake, etc.
However, YouTube seems to have a lot of difficulty providing automatic closed-captioning of mathematical speech.

Fixing these transcription errors took an awful lot of time. I don’t want to know how many hours I devoted to fixing the 120 or so videos (each video is about 3-10 minutes long) recorded so that my hearing-impaired student could have full access to my class. About halfway into this project of fixing the closed-captioning errors, I started writing down some of the closed-captioning errors. I wish I had thought to do this near the start, but oh well.

Phonetically, I can understand why most of these errors were made. But these mistakes really shouldn’t have happened. Here are my favorite howlers that I recorded, showing both what I said and what YouTube thought I said.

“931,147,496” became “930 1,000,000 147,000 496”
“ $A \cap C$ ,” pronounced “ $A$ intersect $C$ ,” became “A inner sexy”
“arithmetic” became “rhythm sick”
“capital $X$ ” became “Catholics”
“cardinality” became “carnality”
“divisible by 5” became “visited his wife live” (I have no idea how that happened)
“ $e^x$ ” became “eat ooh the x”
“for succinctness” became “force the sickness”
“ $n \choose n$ ,” pronounced “ $n$ choose $n$ ,” became “and shoes and”
“set containing” became “second taining”
“ $\sqrt{2}$ ” became “squirt tuna”
“two ways in” became “too wasted”
“what $f(3)$ ,” pronounced “what $f$ of 3,” became “whateva 3”
$x \in B$ , pronounced “ $x$ is in $B$ ,” became “sexism be”
$x \in B \cap C$ , pronounced “ $x$ is in $B$ and $C$ ,” became “x is Indiana see”
$x \in C$ , pronounced “ $x$ is in $C$ ,” became “excellency”

Here’s the complete list of howlers that I recorded for posterity. If I’ve learned nothing else, it’s that I need to be more proactive about ensuring the mathematical accuracy of closed-captioning for my YouTube videos.

4	for
857	a 50 7
1232	1230 two
4761	4760 1
19,999	19,000 999
46,376	40 6376
123,552	120 3,552
5,565,120	five million 565,000 120
931,147,496	930 1,000,000 147,000 496
$(2,\emptyset)$	2d sent
$(20,8)$	28
$[1,2]$	one too
$12 \choose 4$	12 juice 4
$16 \choose 8$	16 choosing
$3 + 1 = 4$	surplus one mix for
$4 \choose 0$	4 2 0
$4 \choose k$	four twos k
$49 \choose 5$	49 she’s 5
$50 \choose 6$	52 six
$8 \choose 2$	a choose to
$A \cap C$	A inner sexy
$A \cap D$	a intersecting
$A \cup B$	a you be
$A \cup C$	a UNC
$A \cup C$	a you will see
a proof	approved
$A^c$	a compliment
$a_i$	asa by
all multiples of	almost visit
an element of $A$	known the debate
an element of $A$	normal today
and divisible	and as above
and positive 50	+ + 50
and tens	intense
and would let this be 3	andrew lippa p3
arithmetic	earth to
arithmetic	rhythm sick
$A$ s	ace
$B$ but not $C$	be but not si
$B \cap C$	b in a sexy
$B$ if	beef
bijection	bi CH action
bijection	bite jection
bijection	by dejection
bijection	by ejection
bijection	by jection
bijection	by Junction
both sets	both says
capital X	Catholics
cardinality	carnality
Cartesian	car to shull
codomain	code Amin
coordinate	cordon
coordinate	court
coordinates	corners
coordinates have	cort in sap
cosine	cosign
disjoint	destroyed
divisible by 5	visited his wife live
$e^x$	eat ooh the x
element of A	illness of A
element of A	mellow today
element $x$	that Windex
elements	of us
empty	MQ
$\emptyset$	descent
$\emptyset$	intercept
equal	able
exponent	x1
factored	acted
factorial	fact welders
fill in	film
flipping four coins	philippine for coins
for succinctness	force the sickness
hence in	Hanson
$i$	eye
$i$	aye
If I divide by 15	If I / 15
in $A$	nae
in there	a bear
infinite	if an
infinite	imp an
infinite	infant
into five	in 2 5
$i$ s	ice
$j \choose r$	j choose arms
$k$ th	cave
$k$ th	kate
likewise	lakh wise
$n \choose n$	and shoes and
$n$ th row	nth throw
one-to-one	121
onto	on 2
$r \choose r$	our shoes are
$r$ to	art at
$r$ to	already
$\mathbb{R}^2$	are too
$\mathbb{R}^2$	our too
$r$ ‘s	hours
same row	samro
second coordinate	sec cornered
set containing	second inning
set containing	second taining
set containing	seconds hanging
set containing	secretary
set containing 1	second anyone
since $A$ has	say has
sixth one	six-month
square	swear
$\sqrt{2}$	score 2
$\sqrt{2}$	squirt of tuna
team A	teammate
term in it	terminate
than zero	gloves are off
that’s chosen	that’s Showzen
then $x$	the next
therefore	there for
this entry in	the century plus
to the $k$	decay
two are	to are
two ways in	too wasted
union	you need
up here	pier
what $f(3)$	whateva 3
will be 4	will before
with $n=4$	finials 4
would subtract	was attract
writing	riding
$x$ is	extras
$x$ is in	exiting
$x$ is in $A$	x as a native
$x$ is in $A$	x is nay
$x$ is in $B$	sexism be
$x$ is in $B$ and $C$	x is Indiana see
$x$ is in $C$	excellency
$x$ is in $C$	X’s and see
$x_2$	next to
$x_2$	text too
$x-$ coordinate	export
$y$	why
$y$	wine
$y$ is greater than or	wider
$y$ s	wise

I’m doing something that I should have done a long time ago: collecting a series of posts into one single post. The links below show my series on my favorite one-liners.

Mathematical Wisecracks for Almost Any Occasion: Part 2, Part 7, Part 8, Part 12, Part 21, Part 28, Part 29, Part 41, Part 46, Part 53, Part 60, Part 63, Part 65, Part 71, Part 79, Part 84, Part 85, Part 100, Part 101, Part 108, Part 109, Part 114