[work] so I'm pretty sure one of my students used fanartists making shippy art on Twitter as an example of the friendship paradox in graph theory in an essay, but tried to talk around the fact that their example was fanartists making shippy art on Twitter, and frankly I find this hilarious

the example the student pulled from their own experience for the essay was "hyperfixated spaces where the topic is, say, a video game, or even more specifically a particular pair of characters from a video game"

Shipping, they're trying to talk around the fact that these are shippers

That's... a new one

new euphemism for shipping "hyperfixated spaces where the topic is a particular pair of characters"

the fun thing is, fandom communities are a perfect example of graph theory and the friendship paradox

but the way they talked around it without naming it outright is frankly hilarious to me

that is amazing

this must be final project stuff right?

yeah, I've been having them write essays analyzing articles instead of in person tests, and one question on each essay is always to explain an example of the math topic discussed in the article from their own experience

and their example was fandom on Twitter