The Printing Errors!

Who do you find GUILTY?

The Witness Statement:

A murderous maths reader called Tomath pointed out that in the earliest copies of "THE FIENDISH ANGLETRON" there is a dreadful mistake! If you have one of the first books printed then you might be lucky to find that you've got one of the extremely valuable flawed copies.

The Crime:

The mistake is on page 136 - so look at your copy now and see if you can find it without us telling you. Otherwise drag your mouse along inside this box:

The angles of the triangle DON'T add up to 180º! The "tee shot" should be 88º

There are also two more mistakes.

1/ Several readers kindly pointed out that
On PAGE 110 it should be sec = 1/cos and cosec = 1/sin

2/ Nine years after the book was first published Ben Stankovich of Australia noticed an error on page 206! When Supersin calculates angle Q in the QIE triangle, there are actually two possible answers because sin^-10.997 can be 86º or 94º. Supersin uses the value 86º but the real answer should have been 94º. (This can be proved using the cosine formula.) So well done to Ben who beat the Angletron!

So whose fault was it?

Here are the suspects:

* some names have been changed to protect people with reputations worth saving.

KJARTAN POSKITT wrote the book to start with and sent it to
LULU MOODY the commissioning editor who only reads the words and ignores the sums and then sends it to
TOPSY TRUELOVE the main editor who checks every little sign, number, comma, full stop and crosses half of the jokes out then sends it to
KINCH and WIMPTON our Pure Mathematicians who only read the Pongo McWhiffy bits and then check all the sums and numbers and then send it back to
TOPSY who crosses out the rest of the jokes and then sends it back to
KJARTAN who tries to sneak the jokes back in and then sends it to
MILLY CUDDLEBOTTOM another editor in New Zealand who checks everything again and if she finds anything that's still wrong she sends it back to
KJARTAN POSKITT who throws a bit of a tantrum and then sends it back to
LULU who sends it to
PHILIP REEVE the artist who doesn't look at the sums because they are beneath him so he draws the rough pictures then sends it to
VERITY GOODTIME who is another editor who checks it all again and then sends it back to
KJARTAN who looks at the pictures and wishes he could draw and then sends it back to
VERITY who sends it to
TOPSY who checks it and sends it to
PHILIP who finishes the pictures and sends it to
This is how the triangle on page 136 should look!
MANDA HEARTTHROB who carefully sticks all the words and pictures in the right place and then sends it to
VERITY who copies it and sends it to
EVERYBODY who all check it for the last time and then it goes to the
PRINTERS who then send it to
KAT BRACEGIRDLE and the other reps who deliver it to the
BOOKSHOPS and BOOKCLUBS who sent it to
YOU!

Remember.. before you go blaming anybody, don't forget that over a million Murderous Maths readers including teachers, academics and other really brainy types ALSO read the book without spotting the mistakes! So big congratulations to Tomath (Thomas Gooderidge), and Ben Stankovich and the handful of other people who realised when something was wriong!