In a troubling reminder of the worst days of the 1980s when teenagers would go “wilding”, wreaking havoc on the citizenry, gangs of rogue mathematicians are refusing to show their work creating a new climate of fear.

“I went to class this morning and the professor had written a math solution on the blackboard but there was no work shown.  I asked him about this and he told me to go to Hell.  Then he called me a ‘bourgeois sophist.’  No one’s called me a bourgeois sophist since Axl Rose” said one student.

Colleges across the United States are reporting an alarming increase of math on math violence.

“I had one math professor walk up to me and ask me if I could name the first 25 prime numbers.  When I said I couldn’t he hit me over the head with a DVD of ‘Stand and Deliver” said a frightened student.  “I mean, I’ve always thought of math professors as hairy and harmless, like ’70s porn.  I expect this level of violence from my history professor but if math teachers are going to go all postal then I’m changing my major to comparative indigenous precolumbian lesbian studies.”

Another student woke to find the words “3x = 9” spray painted on his front door.

“Naturally I didn’t know what it meant.  I was terrified.  Well, not as terrified as the time my girlfriend forced me to sit through the Sex and the City movie.  But I was still scared.”

Newspapers across the United States have reported getting anonymous letters from a group calling itself “The Math Liberation Front.”  Typical of the letters is this one:

People of America.  Wake up!  You are weak and for too long you have neglected Math.  We of the Math Liberation Front will continue with our random acts of math until this has changed.

Know your multiplications tables.  There is strength through multiplication.

P.S. – We don’t like the number “0”.  We seek to abolish it.

P.P.S. – Can anyone tell us where Bagel Street is?  We need to find the Susquehanna Hat Company.

P.P.P.S – We like pineapple on our pizza.  Mathematically it’s a very logical topping.

From Washington, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told reporters that, while she is trying to remain optimistic, “if we’ve lost the mathematicians then it’s time to give up.  The end of the world is near.”

She then ordered her lunch:  Pizza with pineapple topping.

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