As Erika admired her cousin Lennox’s “tan” (olive complexion) I reminded her that Lennox’s father is ½ Salvadoran, with Mestizo heritage, giving him darker skin. She reasoned, “If Uncle Eric is ½ Salvadoran, then Lennox is…1/3 Salvadoran?”
Fractions were never her strong suit. But it got me thinking about heritage fractions. You never hear “I’m 1/3 Irish.” Can you be 1/3 anything? I don’t think so: 2 to the nth power is never divisible evenly by 3. You can get close – if 11 of your 32 great, great, great grandparents are of the same ilk, but I don’t think you can be exactly 1/3 anything. Now, if 11,184,811 of your 33,554,432 23x great grandparents are Irish or something, we’ll call it close enough. But good luck with that.
3 comments:
I spent some time trying to put an odd number in the denominator after Michael Scott from The Office tells Oscar he is 3/15th Native American.
You came closer than I did.
3/15ths; that is so funny.
i think i would have to be in solitary confinement for a couple of years before I ever attempted to figure this out...
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