Gengulphus wrote:AsleepInYorkshire wrote:As a total aside may I ask if any of your Math's teachers remained in post for more than a year [Sorry my humour's as good as my maths ... eek ]
The answer is "yes" for my maths teacher in the last few years of secondary school - but you've got to take into account that he was a mathematician! ;-) Before that, I don't really remember my maths teachers and quickly lost track of them, due to moves between schools in different countries.
And by the way, I'm by no means the most pedantic of mathematicians. As an illustrative puzzle, when I was in the university maths department, it would not infrequently happen that someone would make a comment such as "I wonder whether that depends on the axiom of choice or not?" and instantly get an answer that was both undoubtedly correct and thoroughly unhelpful. What was that answer? (To answer this, you don't need to know anything about the axiom of choice other than that some maths results depend on it and others don't.)
Gengulphus
Whoops, I missed your question until bluedonkey's post drew my eye back to it.
I expect the answer might be one that's always been popular in my family. Acknowledging that you wonder, but saying nothing about the subject on which you wonder.
And surely the form will be familiar to most people, in examples like:
Would you like tea or coffee? Yes please!
Or indeed in Hamlet's reply when asked what he was reading.