But all this tedium is more than made up for by a single sentence-the one about "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".

From Barbie dolls programmed to say "math class is tough" to ministers of state who will parse and analyse a sentence but refuse to answer "what's half of three-quarters?", maths-phobia is everywhere.

To a human reader, this statement recalls (most probably) an earlier time when nonsense rhymes were a major part of life.