• blight [he/him]
    ·
    10 months ago

    I can see how this could happen if these subs are a translation of subs in a third language that doesn't use latinized numerals that much (eg Arabic), and in the flow of translating hundreds of lines they just kept the note

    • kleeon [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      10 months ago

      I don't think this was supposed to be a math problem. It looks like a room number

    • Tervell [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      edit-2
      10 months ago

      I'm not sure this is a real sub, I assumed it was just a joke. Pretty sure it's a school room number, or I guess technically a class number (so, Grade 3, Class 2), so it's definitely not meant to be read as the mathematical expression 3 - 2.

      • Alaskaball [comrade/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        10 months ago

        so, Grade 3, Class 2)

        Could also mean floor 3, classroom 2. I think I recall Japan and other Asian countries count the ground floor as the 1st floor, do technically it would be 2-2 if we had japanese-style schools here in the u.s

        • Underwaterbob@lemm.ee
          ·
          10 months ago

          Nah. It's grade three, class two. Could be elementary, middle, or high school grade three. That's the way all the schools in Japan and Korea do it. Rooms with floor numbers that aren't in schools are typically all one digit with no hyphen.

    • sooper_dooper_roofer [none/use name]
      ·
      10 months ago

      a lot of the numbers were the same (although not the ones in OP) even back in India where they originated

      https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Diagrams/Indian_num_2.gif