Whenever I desire to know the nerd quantity in a room I use a fairly simple test that I perform:

1. Start a conversation with a nearby ‘normal’ about something interesting that isn’t solved easily (This also works if you’re mid-lecture and you’re instructing on some problem)
2. Begin to say: “Well, that’s an interesting problem. It’s kind of like an episode of MythBuster’s where they <insert some myth here>.”
3. Start the timer.

In any case, shortly after you complete step 3 you should notice that someone has turned around and said the following words to you “I SAW THAT EPISODE!!! THEY …..”.

At this point, two things happen. First, you roll your eyes or breathe in loudly and try to continue your conversation with the normal. Second, if you’re lucky, you’ll notice immediate exponential growth and the expansion of the conversation into a third or fourth person who say “Hey, are you talking about MYTHBUSTERS?!? I saw that episode, they….”. If you are not lucky, the first nerd will sense a lack of social protection, realize there’s no outlet for the feelings and words he needs to express and it will instinctively latch onto your skull and scream into your eardrum about dummies and explosives.

(That’s why I always start each test with a zeroth step: 0. pray silently to the goddess of probability that every room’s nerd quantity is x where x > 2)

You see, this test operates on the well known fact that most nerds are annoying. Contrary to popular culture, however,  this is not a cute, fun, innocent annoying. This is the kind of annoying that causes eye bleeding and blackouts. I know because I get them on a daily basis. If you don’t understand this problem, I’ll let you review the thousands of dollars in unnecessary medical bills resulting from annoyance-related accidents.

For all you nerds out there:

Please stop freaking out about MythBusters. I say this for the sake of my health and your image in society. I don’t think anyone truly dislikes the show, but please stop making it something that you salivate over. It’s just television…just television. Normal people don’t even react like that to the birth of a child, and, to be perfectly honest, it’s kind of freaking the rest of us out.  Especially since it happens once a week.