Solid Geometry for Dummy Eighth Graders

If there's anything that irks our research staffers more than a self-proclaimed "expert" who proves to be ignorant, we aren't really sure what that might be. While we realize that at least some of the stupidity expressed in eHow.com content (native or reassigned to a niche site) is the fault of ignorant J-school grads working as "content editors," we also know that here was a protocol for correcting any errors they introduced. We'd like to think that as a "former math tutor," Marie Mulrooney would have known that something  was seriously wrong with her "How to Calculate Cubic Space," now found at Sciencing.com.

Given the time constraints placed on eHow.com contributors¹ – they "only" had a week to research and write 300-word articles – it's no surprise that Mulrooney interpreted this question as one asked by some middle-schooler taking geometry. That may be true, or it might have also been one of the English majors who ended up selling real estate.

Whatever the case, Marie took the easy way out and dashed off formulas and examples for two classes of shapes: "Squares and Rectangles" and "Spheres." We see that Mulrooney reproduced the formula for the area of a sphere, V = 4⁄3πr³, correctly. On the other hand, Marie completely botched the example. According to her text, you need to "Cube the circle’s radius. In other words, multiply it by itself three times. So if your circle has a radius of 3 inches, 3 cubed would be 3 * 3 * 3 = 9 inches cubed."

Wait, what? to cube a number means to "multiply it by itself three times"? That's not what we think cubing a number is...  we think it's to multiply a number by itself and multiply the product by the first number (that's multiplying twice...). Whatever definition you may have for raising a number to a cube, however, the cube of 3 is not 9, it is 27! In other words, there's a good reason why this dunce is a former math tutor!

And while we're at it, Marie "Squares and Rectangles" don't have cubic space. Squares and rectangles are two-dimensional shapes, and thus have area. If you want the three-dimensional shapes built on squares and rectangles, those are the cube and the rectangular solid.
Some people wonder why we call the awardee the Dumbass of the Day instead of something more "respectful." Sheesh: this woman collected a cash stipend for shoddy work because A) she was in too big a hurry to move to the next stipend, B) she was too stupid to know she'd made a mistake, or C) both of the above. What would you call her? A "Poor, misguided soul"? Feh.

¹ You can see one of them whining about the stress in a comment here...

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