# Thoroughly embarrassed myself in front of class the other day

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoroughly-embarrassed-myself-in-front-of-class-the-other-day/656835>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [April 27, 2013, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoroughly-embarrassed-myself-in-front-of-class-the-other-day/656835 "2013-04-27T12:57:34Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\
**Post date:** [April 27, 2013, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoroughly-embarrassed-myself-in-front-of-class-the-other-day/656835/1 "2013-04-27T12:57:34Z")

</div>

I am teaching a MAT 115 class at a local college, and am using Excel (with projector) to show the students how to perform simple statistics on sampled data sets. Stuff like average, standard deviation, etc. The class consists of six women and one man.

I started the exercise by showing a set of data in cells B4 through B23. The first thing I did was have Excel count the number of data points (N) in the sample:

=COUNT(B4:B23)

But I didn’t type that. I screwed up and typed

=CUNT(B4:B23)

The students erupted in laughter, and I about died. :o One student asked, “So what does that function give you?”

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\
**Post date:** [April 27, 2013, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoroughly-embarrassed-myself-in-front-of-class-the-other-day/656835/2 "2013-04-27T13:01:38Z")

</div>

> [@Crafter\_Man](#):
>
> =CUNT(B4:B23)
> 
> The students erupted in laughter, and I about died. :o One student asked, “So what does that function give you?”

The first part sounds like the crudest possible declaration of male heterosexuality, along the lines of “bros before hos.”

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![kayT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayt/32/3633_2.png) [@kayT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayT)\
**Post date:** [April 27, 2013, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoroughly-embarrassed-myself-in-front-of-class-the-other-day/656835/3 "2013-04-27T13:03:28Z")

</div>

During my student teaching one of the other student teachers, in speaking of Lord Jim, boldly declared that “he jumped off the shop and was shit.”

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\
**Post date:** [April 27, 2013, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoroughly-embarrassed-myself-in-front-of-class-the-other-day/656835/4 "2013-04-27T13:47:00Z")

</div>

Good thing you don’t teach at CUNY.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\
**Post date:** [April 27, 2013, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoroughly-embarrassed-myself-in-front-of-class-the-other-day/656835/5 "2013-04-27T16:09:00Z")

</div>

When I was first working in Japan in a documentation company, we did both the Japanese and English versions of an oscilloscope for a Japanese manufacturer.

The manufacturer had standardized on four-letter abbreviations for all the functions, and since “CONT” was taken for “continuous” they had selected “CUNT” for “count.”

Despite my warnings, it wasn’t changed. Never heard what happened, though.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\
**Post date:** [April 27, 2013, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoroughly-embarrassed-myself-in-front-of-class-the-other-day/656835/6 "2013-04-27T17:08:53Z")

</div>

when I was in Grade Eight, our English teacher was reading a poem about a wandering hobo, who had no riches of this world, but like St Francis, had a special relationship with wild animals.

The poem ended with the line:

“A bird shall sit on his shoulder.”

She made the obvious mistake…