Inverse Memes

Patrick Star from SpongeBob finally understanding basic math operations is the perfect mascot for mathematical confusion. The beauty here is that he's actually right - exponentiation (X n ) is indeed multiplying X by itself n times, while its inverse "Noitaitnenopxe" (X n ) would logically be dividing X by itself n times. The fact that we don't actually use this notation in formal mathematics makes it even funnier. This is precisely why half my students think math is just making things unnecessarily complicated when they could just write things out in plain English. Spoiler alert: those students usually don't make it to calculus.