The MIT Cheer

[alexxkay]

This came up in conversation recently, and some of my readers may not have had the joy of seeing it yet:

I’m a beaver,
You’re a beaver,
We are beavers all!
And when we get together,
We do the beaver call!

E to the u du dx,
E to the x dx!
Cosine secant tangent sine,
3.14159,
Integral, radical, mu, dv!
Slipstick, slide rule, M-I-T!

Go tech!

Comments

[umbran.livejournal.com]

As if any of them know how to use a slide rule any more. Bah!

[kgbooklog.livejournal.com]

Speaking of silliness (and the logic puzzles we've been doing lately), I saw this today in the comments of a webcomic:
IF Susan says “I played tennis with Bill on Thursday,” AND Susan is a liar, THEN Thursday isn’t even a real day.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

I've known the second part for ages, but the first part ("beaver...") is ν to me.

[hfcougar.livejournal.com]

Interesting. We used to sing the first verse by itself at summer camp, in Minnesota. I always thought it was a weird but amusing little song and it never occurred to me it was a school's cheer song. I wonder how that made its way from MIT to our camp.

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

Some young people use camp counselor jobs to help support traveling far from their origins to see the world. One of my camp counselors was (or at least claimed to be) a minor Danish prince!

Alternately, it might have started as a camp song and made its way to MIT, who adopted it because of the whole "beaver mascot" thing.

[jamey1138.livejournal.com]

At Northwestern, we have a variation of this (at least in NUMB -- the Northwestern University Marching Band) we call "The Calculus Cheer." Like most NUMB cheers, it starts with the usual pattern:

Spirit Leader: "Hey, Band!"
Band: "Hey, what?"
Spirit Leader: "Let's CALCULUS THEM!"
Band: "Yeah!"
ALL: "Two, Four, Six, Eight
Time to differentiate
d to the x, dx/dy
d to the y, D-why?
3.14159
Cosine, tangent, inverse sine
Add an asymptotic line
Come on, Wildcats, hold that line...
... SEGMENT!!"

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

Segmentation fault -- smile dumped.