Monday, 30 September 2013

Is there something to the "let $\varepsilon < 0$" joke that I'm missing?

Is there something to the "let $\varepsilon < 0$" joke that I'm missing?

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask this, but I feel it's a question
of vital importance to the future of math education.
I hear this listed as a "math joke" all the time and I've never got it.
I've always thought that it was just dumb, but have started to wonder if
I'm missing something. Is the joke literally that it's just unexpected to
take $\varepsilon < 0$ since we usually let $\varepsilon$ represent a
small positive number, or is there something else to it?

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