Question

Dear Mitch,

When are those ideas for Halloween costumes for math teachers going to arrive?

Patiently waiting,

Margorie B.,

Wife of a New Math Teacher 

Answer

Dear Margorie B.,

Here goes...

1) Paint a pumpkin costume black and go as a decimal point,

2) Dress up as a lion and use a marker to put numbers all over it (a "number-lion"),

3) Wear a hat with a small plant growing out of the top of it ("GEE-I'm-A-TREE"), or geometry)

4) Dress as a Crazily-dressed number in the straight-jacket (an "irrational number"), 

5) Create two giant axes (or purchase the plastic ones that are sold almost everywhere for other Halloweeen costumes), and then with a permanent marker put X's all over one ax, and put Y's all over the other.  Cross the two axes and attach them to each other with clear sealing tape.  Then affix them to the front of your body, either by cutting a hole through them and feeding a belt through that hole or by some other method.  You will be a set of "X-and-Y axes".

6) Take a large cardboard square or whole cardboard box that can go over your head and rest on your shoulders.  Paint it yellow, like a road sign.  Then, when the paint is dry, print the word "division" on the front.  Print the same word on the back.  You are now a "division sign".

7) Follow the process of the idea behind number 3, as described above, you could choose to be an addition sign, a subtraction sign, a multiplication sign, a "CO-sign", etc.

8)  If you could somehow get yourself to look like a cage, particularly a bird cage, either by covering a large box that you wear with black and white graph paper and drawing a door on it, etc., or actually wearing part of a discarded piece of chicken wire from the science department, etc., and paint the phrase "This cage contains Polly", the empty cage will transform you into an image of a "POLYGON".

9) Take a thick black marker, and on a white tee-shirt make one 45-degree angle facing another 45-degree angle, with their open sides facing each other, sort of like two birds' beaks open towards each other, and in one of those cartoon 'bubbles' that contain words you have one angle telling the other that he/she looks "mighty sharp today", and have the other angle's bubble contain a similar compliment in response.

10) You could either buy an inexpensive pumpkin costume (or make some kind of round shape out of cardboard or foam rubber or something like that), then paint a number on the front and back in a circular, swirling style, and you'd be a...

ROUND NUMBER

10) You could dress up in a dapper suit, maybe get a tube of one of those artificial tanning products that some people rub on their face to darken their complection slightly, and you'd be a...

TAN-GENT

(I guess that one is limited to males, because of the 'gent' part.)

11) You could put a line of red or bright orange tape (such as electrical tape) vertically up and down your body, and then, somehow, with an application of yellow and orange tissue paper or some washable marker, etc., make the line that's going up and down your body appear as though it were on fire, and you'd be a LINE, which is, of course...

180 DEGREES (Ouch, that's hot!)

12) You could somehow create a costume of an ANGLE, but instead of creating it out of two nice, straight rays, make them all bent and broken-looking, and you'd be a...

RECTANGLE (Wrecked Angle!)

13) Draw two angles and draw cartoon  bubbles coming from them in which they compliment each other...

You would have "COMPLIMENTARY ANGLES" (two angles that add up to ninety degrees!) 

Happy holiday!  Have fun!

Hoping these thoughts help,

Mitch