Weapons of Math Instruction

This has been around for at least a couple of years but keeps returning to the email inbox so I thought I’d point out that although the authors of the joke seem to see “al-gebra” as just a funny coincidence,I’ve always thought that it could be used as a lead-in to a discussion of the origins of the subject and as a timely reminder of the fact that there was once a time when the Islamic world was a refuge of tolerance and rationality.