History Main / CarryTheOne

* Played with in ''Film/MysteryScienceTheater3000TheMovie''. Dr. Forrester makes some calculations on an ''abacus'' regarding how long it will take him to conquer the world after the latest movie is finished. He rattles the beads for a few seconds, then adds, "Adjust for pi." By said calculations, he should be ruling the world by "oh, six, six-thirty at the latest." Needless to say, he's wrong.

* Kryten in ''Series/RedDwarf'', episode "Camille", forgot to carry the three.

* In ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', when Quark and Odo crash on an uninhabited planet and need to get a signal out to be rescued, this exchange occurs, where Quark (a Ferengi) is doing complex calculations in his head.
-->'''Quark''': "All we have to do is haul this transmitter to higher ground, more altitude less atmosphere. Go high enough and we just might get a signal out."\\
'''Odo''': "How much higher do we have to go?"\\
'''Quark''': "Carry the seven, take the square root, times pi... I'd say ah..." *points to a '''VERY''' high peak* "''that'' high."

[[folder:Web Comics]]

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[[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant Has nothing to do with]] when your ChosenOne [[NowLetMeCarryYou refuses to walk]], nor with [[Literature/TheLordOfTheRings what Frodo did.]] Compare with MisplacedADecimalPoint, the other common arithmetic mistake.

* In one ''ComicStrip/BloomCounty'' strip, Oliver uses an equation to prove that flightless waterfowl shouldn't exist, but by the end of the strip he realized he forgot to carry the two. [[EverythingsBetterWithPenguins Resident penguin]] Opus, who had been [[PuffOfLogic fading out of existence]] until then, asks Oliver not to do that again.

* Said by Dr. Frink in ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', episode "Itchy and Scratchy Land". He was informing his coworkers that the robots will inevitably turn against their human masters, then informs them they have 24 hours before this happens. The robots start revolting immediately, and Frink realizes he did the trope.
** In the episode "The Trouble with Trillions", there's a jam at the post office on April 15 as everyone tries to file his taxes. Lenny is filling out the forms using Professor Frink's back as his desk.

* {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d in ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'', episode "Insane in the Mainframe". Hermes is doing stuff on his calculator and he says 'carry the one', then presses a button on his calculator that says, "Carry the One."

* In ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'', Sheldon laughs excessively (and [[SignatureLaugh un-Sheldon-like]]) when remembering a time Leonard did this (in a published paper, no less).

[[folder:Literature]]
* A spaceship in one of the ''Murderous Maths'' books crashes because the pilot, during a long and complicated trajectory equation, forgets to carry the one.
* In the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' novel ''Literature/{{Thud}}'', the Gooseberry organiser-imp tells Vimes that "you don't always carry the tens" when doing the Watch accounts.
* From Creator/AAMilne's ''Now We Are Six'', the poem "The Emperor's Rhyme" is about how the King of Peru(who was Emperor too) would recite the following verse to calm his nerves when necessary;
-->''Eight eights are sixty-four;\\
Multiply by seven.\\
When it’s done,\\
Carry one,\\
And take away Eleven.\\
Nine nines are eighty-one;\\
Multiply by three.\\
If it’s more,\\
Carry four,\\
And then it’s time for tea.''
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A math related StockPhrase. TheSmartGuy states the result of his calculations, only to be corrected. He promptly says: "Oh yeah, I forgot to carry the one". The phrase's purpose is to show that even though TheSmartGuy is only a human, and therefore prone to mistakes, he is able to spot where he made the mistake and explain it in a short {{Techno Babble}}-ish sentence. Commonly used in this form:

->''"H-hey, I was doing my best! Some warning would have been nice, you've never told me anything like that could happen! What the hell was that, anyway!?"''
->''I thought I heard her say something that sounded suspiciously like 'like father like son', before she settled on just glaring at me, and folding her arms. "You forgot to carry the one."''
-> ''Oh, dangit, she was right. Someone snuck a one in on my [[AlienGeometries non-Euclidean]] theorizing! Major bummer.''
-->-- '''[[GenderBender Josie Gilman]] and [[AliceAllusion Ecila Mason]]''', "I Looked into the Abyss, and It Winked", ''Literature/WhateleyUniverse''

** "This is GEOGRAPHY!"

* In ''VideoGame/SamAndMaxFreelancePolice: Chariots of the Dogs'', the Mariachi supervisor of the Time Vortex mutters "carry the tres" (Spanish for three) when trying to figure out where an ink ribbon landed after it was lost in space and time.

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* In the
''[[VideoGame/Fallout:NewVegas]]'' DLC Old World Blues, Dr. Mobius taunts Dr. Klein for carrying the two in a random announcement.

* Sutwell from ''Film/BeachParty'' attempts AwesomenessByAnalysis before his first attempt at surfing, doing calculations involving things like water pressure with his finger in the sand. The result is a FailureMontage of him falling off the board before he realizes he forgot to carry the two.

Also, when someone is calculating, he will always say "...carry the one...", mostly because carrying numbers is the most advanced mathematical concept [[WritersCannotDoMath most writers]] (and audiences) can remember from way back then. Note, though, that the line works with any single-digit number, so you can hear, for instance, "carry the seven".[[note]]The prevalence of "one" is probably due to the fact that, in the simplest case, addition of two numbers, you'll never have a bigger digit than 1 to carry, because 9+9='''1'''8. This is also a manifestation of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law Benford's Law]][[/note]]

-->'''Quark''': "All we have to do is haul this transmitter to higher ground, more altitude less atmosphere. Go high enough and we just might get a signal out."
-->'''Odo''': "How much higher do we have to go?"\\

[[folder:Newspaper Comics]]
* In one ''ComicStrip/BloomCounty'' strip, Oliver uses an equation to prove that flightless waterfowl shouldn't exist, but by the end of the strip he realized he forgot to carry the two. [[EverythingsBetterWithPenguins Resident penguin]] Opus, who had been [[PuffOfLogic fading out of existence]] until then, asks Oliver not to do that again.
* [[http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1993-03-20/ This]] ''ComicStrip/{{Dilbert}}'' strip has a cashier ask Dilbert for $1.89. Dilbert gives him $7.14 "for simplicity". (In his defense, that ''is'' easy change to give, if maybe not to calculate: it's $5.25.)
--> '''Dilbert:''' ''({{breaking the fourth wall}})'' As an engineer, I feel a professional responsibility to make things easier for people.\\
'''Cashier's thought bubble:''' ... Carry the three.
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* In the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' novel ''Discworld/{{Thud}}'', the Gooseberry organiser-imp tells Vimes that "you don't always carry the tens" when doing the Watch accounts.

->-- '''[[GenderBender Josie Gilman]] and [[AliceAllusion Ecila Mason]]''', "I Looked into the Abyss, and It Winked", ''Literature/WhateleyUniverse''

[[folder:Webcomics]]

* ''Literature/WhateleyUniverse'': Josie Gilman, whose powers are mathematics-based, has thins problem at times, with bizarre consequences such as causing hundreds of dead alternate-universe versions of herself to fall out of the sky.

** Used again in another episode: when Farnsworth cracks the Grand Unified Theory, you can hear him say "carry the infinity"

->-- '''[[GenderBender Josie Gilman]] and [[AliceAllusion Ecila Mason]]''', "I Looked Into the Abyss, and It Winked", ''Literature/WhateleyUniverse''

-> ''Oh, dangit, she was right. Someone snuck a one in on my non-euclidean theorizing! Major bummer.''

[[IThoughtItMeant Has nothing to do with]] when your ChosenOne [[NowLetMeCarryYou refuses to walk]], nor with [[Literature/TheLordOfTheRings what Frodo did.]] Compare with MisplacedADecimalPoint, the other common arithmetic mistake.

* Done in ''[[TonyHawksProSkater Tony Hawk's Underground 2]]'' at the end of the Australia stage, when your character is about to be booted off the tour. You are only saved because Rodney Mullen spots a mistake in the score tally, and Tony and Bam's teams are actually tied.

* Music/TomLehrer, in "New Math," describes a traditional way of doing a subtraction problem: "Three from two is nine, carry the one..." but claims that in the New Math approach to mathematics teaching that was then in vogue, "the idea is to know what you're doing, rather than to get the right answer." As a result, he does the problem over again, with ''different'' carrying of the one...to get the same answer, of course, but he does it so fast that it's hard to follow.

* ''WesternAnimation/ThePenguinsOfMadagascar'': When the penguins' vacation to the moon [[spoiler:turns out to be a failure]], Kowalski says while checking his calculations for the rocket, "It seems I forgot to carry the two."

[[folder:Live Action TV]]