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Students in Louisiana thought this math symbol looked like a gun. Police were called

HonestJoe said:
You're assuming everything in the OP article is complete and accurate though. When something sounds too ridiculous to be true (and when an article has a broken link - nobody spot that?), it's always worth checking for further clarification. That's how I found the link I put in post #2 (apparently ignored or dismissed); Oberlin student cleared by law enforcement still banned from sch - KATC.com | Continuous News Coverage | Acadiana-Lafayette Suggesting that what was actually reported to the police didn't say anything about a square root symbol because the rumour has already gone far beyond that, which makes much more sense. :)
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Did you keep reading the very next paragraph in the article talks about the comments out of context. I may be lazy but at least I can an article to the end
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Of course the other students didn't say square root symbol to the police since they obviously didn't know what it was. They thought he was drawing guns.

The headline doesn't say the cops were told math symbol or anything. It says the student was investigated because of the symbol. The symbol is what prompted the investigation.

Here is the exact headline and I want one of you two to point out the lie.

Square root a gun? Louisiana student investigated over math symbol comments
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I cannot believe this is a discussion now with 2 people.
 
Kreton said:
Of course the other students didn't say square root symbol to the police since they obviously didn't know what it was. They thought he was drawing guns.
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You just made that up. None of the articles suggest any of the students didn't know what the symbol was. There's an indirect quote of one saying the symbol (also) looks like a gun and an indirect quote of another making a threat to shoot him. The article linked by, and actually quoting, the Sheriff suggests that the rumour mill exaggerated that second comment so what was actually reported to them via a TV station was a serious threat from a student to shoot up the school.

Kreton said:
The headline...
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Headlines aren't reliable explanations of all the facts. If they were, we wouldn't need the actual articles. Their purpose is to attract attention and get people to buy a paper or click on a link. I'd always recommend generally ignoring them.

Kreton said:
Here is the exact headline and I want one of you two to point out the lie.
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I never said that headline was a lie, only that it (and the article as a whole) was misleading (possibly intentionally for clicks, possibly due to the confusion surrounding the incident). Because what it was claiming sounded ridiculous and because it's link to the Sheriff's Facebook page was broken, I chose to try to seek further confirmation, finding the second article I linked on that Facebook page, which gives a fuller and more believable sequence of events with the direct quotes from the Sheriff.
 
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