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From: Aubrey Jaffer on 1 Apr 2010 11:55
You Might be a Mathematician if ...

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humor humor humor humor
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You Might be a Mathematician if ...

* at the age of 19 your most productive years are behind you;
* your major result will be named for someone else;
* your fame lies in posing the question you can't answer;

* you count on your fingers in binary;
* you can fold planar strips into regular polyhedra ... entirely in your head;
* hypergeometric summations are the most fun you can have with your clothes on;

* a copy of Russell's letter to Frege adorns your wall;
* you remember postal addresses by means of number theory:
"The smallest integer which is the sum of two cubes in two different ways";
* you understand all the mathematics Gauss produced ... through age 13;

* the solution to every problem involves counting balls into boxes;
* you have calculated how many ways (ignoring reflections) there are of lacing
your sneaker;
* you refuse to join any set that would have you as a member;

* you are obsessed with the little combinatorics puzzles that arise daily;
* you cannot refrain from blurting out counterexamples when someone claims an
impossibility;
* you make mistakes ... but they are really interesting mistakes;

* doing something more than once is boring;
* you suffer dental and gum disease because brushing teeth is boring;
* because of your dental problems, mention of the word "calculus" raises mixed
emotions;

* you celebrate Rota's birthday decadently with donuts and champagne in paper
cups;
* you celebrate Erdös's birthday furtively with Benzedrine chased by a double
espresso;
* you celebrate Nash's birthday psychotically with LSD while pedaling a bicycle
in figure eights;

* your romantic relationship is strained when you show too much interest in
your beloved's mathematician acquaintances;
* unemployment is a welcome opportunity to make progress on your life's work;
* it is difficult to plan for retirement given the current state of the
continuum hypothesis;

* you know a six-letter word with three vowels, all of which are "y";
* you wonder how Euler pronounced "Euclid";
* caffeine is one of your major food groups;

* You are actually familiar with the techniques in "Pretty Poly Nomial and
Curly Pi";
* your correspondence has footnotes and bibliography;
* you have already obtained your next three years of reading material;

* you learned French so you could read Bourbaki;
* you bring Bourbaki's "Variétés Différentielles Analytiques Fascicule de
Résultats" on vacation;
* you don't bother taking vacations when you can read Bourbaki at home;

* you visit Earth primarily for lectures and family obligations;
* your progeny are alarmed to learn that Mathematics may be a heritable
genetic trait;
* your opinion of A Beautiful Mind is "been there; done that!"

Copyright © 2002, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009 Aubrey Jaffer
http://people.csail.mit.edu/jaffer/YMBAMI

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humor humor humor humor
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