Alberta Premier Proposes “Rounder Act of 2015”

EDMONTON, Alberta – (Friday the 13th) Alberta Premier Wretched Nutley is following up on an NDP campaign promise to simplify the lives of Albertans by proposing the “Rounder Act of 2015.”  The legislation will allow the government to round off the value of inconvenient and troublesome numbers, making math considerably easier, especially for her cabinet members.  Examples include:

• The value of π, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, will be rounded to 3 from the vastly more complicated 3.14159265… Similarly, the natural logarithm base e (2.718281…) will also be rounded to 3. Reports indicate that Alberta school-aged children have already begun to rejoice these changes.
• No polygon of more than eight sides will be allowed and the official provincial geometric shape will be the pentagram. (Yes, a fiery black pentagram that reeks of burning human flesh.)
• Retail stores and restaurants will no longer be allowed to advertise a price such as $9.99. It will have to be simply $10.
• The remnants of the oil and gas industry will no longer be allowed to use any measurements other than metric system, without decimal places.
• The provincial income tax rate for all income that exceeds $125,000 per year will be rounded off to 100%. This move is expected to greatly simplify the tax return process for many.
• The answer to any questions regarding pipeline approval and expediting hydraulic fracturing licensing will be rounded to “no.”
• Speedometers in vehicles will display velocity only in 10 km/hr increments. This includes digital speedometers that will only display figures ending in 0.

Since another definition of “rounder” is a dissolute person, former premier Jim Prentice of the Progressive Conservative party made a weak joke about the title of the legislation being a comment on the NDP.  Nobody laughed and Prentice quickly went back into hiding.

Mathematicians and other rational persons are outraged with the NDP’s Rounder Act of 2015.

Dr. Sum Ting Wong, Professor of Algebraic Dichotomies at the University of Calgary, said,

“You can’t arbitrarily change the value of numbers!  This is madness!  And these people are running the province?”

In response to Dr. Ting Wong’s challenge, the NDP Central Committee presented the following example of the new democratic math concepts that went into the proposed provincial budget.

Let A = B:

(1)     A = B

Multiply both sides by A:

(2)    A²  = AB

Subtract B² from both sides:

(3)    A² – B²  = AB – B²

Factor the equation:

(4)    (A+B)(A–B) = B(A–B)

Divide by (A – B):

(5)    (A + B) = B

Since A = B then:

(6)    2B = B

Divide by B:

(7)     2 = 1

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