Favorite branch of math?

[Mith]

Spoiler: How many students

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35 to 45 years ago?

No idea.

A quick websearch tells me that the same school had 445 students in 2016, my old Junior High 561, and my High School 3,417.

My son who went to elementary school in an adjacent district this last decade that had 523 students in 2016, and his classes had 35 to 40 students each.

My son's elematary school had two lunches and recesses so only half would be out at the same time, I don't remember that for me but who knows?

Just like @pendell I would go to the library to escape, but I didn't go to the school library, I went to the public library, except on the rare occasions that I had some cash in which case I went to "Best of Two Worlds", "Comics & Comix", "Dark Carnival", "Gambit", "Games of Berkeley", or "The Other Change of Hobbit", so books, comics, ot games, and I stopped going to class after lunch or recess,there were no "truant officers", and I don't remember anyone mentioning that I was skipping school, I do remember that around age nine or ten I was told that I had to take a test adminstered by some adult who was not my teacher, maybe a social worker? And I was told that my arithmetic and writing skills were at or slightly below grade level, but my reading comprehension was already college level, which is ironic because the only college I attended was sneaking into the Doe Library, and Morrison Reading Room at the University of California, when I was a High school student, and also, no joke, me, my brother, and my DM actually for real explored the University steam tunnels (like the Tom Hanks movie) and we found bedding and sketch books of people who lived in them.

My schools were mostly close to the University, and in the 1970's and '80's there were demonstrations and riots, I remember seeing a mob being chased by police with billy clubs, another time I saw a police car on fire that was surrounded by a crowd, and once (this one I don't remember, my mother told me this) the wind actually carried tear gas to my pre-school/kindergarten.

My son doesn't understand when I tell him he's lucky to be bored.

"May you live in interesting times" IS a curse after all.

[danzibr]

[...]

Ahh, Mathematics. Bringing out the pedantry in people.

[Mith]

Ahh, Mathematics. Bringing out the pedantry in people.

But they are on topic.

[goldenexpert]

Geometry, because It's only a big game of shapes. And I loveeeee shapes