Meta: This is the introduction to what was going to be a blog-based story; the narrator (Ziv), like me, is an avid blogger - and so the storyline would alternate between standard first-person narration and blog-narration, but with only the blog-narration being available accessible to the other characters in the story. I also wrote this prior to NaNoWriMo 2006, but I abandoned it before it ever really got off the ground.
September 07, 2006
Any girl who knows anything about anything (which immediately discounts a large segment of our population, I’m afraid) knows that every calculus class has to have at least one cute guy in it. Seriously, it’s become such a cliché they even used it in Mean Girls. Yes, I saw Mean Girls, stop giving me that look. Okay, so there’s no way anybody could take that argument seriously (and if you did, I think there’s something seriously wrong with you), but with a little estimation and the Pigeonhole principle it makes a decent amount of sense. Think of it this way, if there are n calculus classes and “All Students Take Calculus” (that’s not just a mnemonic here at MIT, it’s actually true, at least for the freshmen), than so long as the number of cute male freshmen is greater than or equal to n, each freshman girl is virtually guaranteed to have someone to stare at when taking derivatives starts to get dull. Now, if the freshman class has approximately 1000 students, that’s about 500 males, and let’s say about x% of them are cute. So long as x is a reasonable number and you don’t have ridiculously high standards, x% of 500 > n. Q.E.D.
Now, if you turned in a proof like that for 18.100B, you probably wouldn’t get much credit unless your TA had a good sense of humor, but this isn’t 18.100B (Analysis I) – I’m not taking that until next semester. No, I’m taking good old 18.02, that’s Multivariable Calc, for those of you who don’t speak MITese, and I’m loving every minute of it… even when taking derivatives starts to get dull. In short, I’ve found ample evidence in support of my hypothesis.
His name is Connor Wheatley, and he actually lives just down the hall from me, but I never would’ve known it if he hadn’t told me. He’s one of those crazy overachievers who can solve their 8.012 p-set problems in their head while playing a concerto on the violin and rowing a single down the Charles at the same time. In other words, he’s pretty much never in the dorm, and the only time I ever see him is during 18.02 lecture. I don’t know what he’s doing taking 18.02 anyways, you would think someone like him would have advanced standing credit or at least be taking 18.022 (Math for Masochists), but it’s nice to have him around. He’s good to bounce ideas off of.
“Your proof is crap, Ziv.”
“What? What are you talking about, Connor? Everybody knows that when you cross two perpendicular vectors the result is zero.” Well, okay, not everybody. But Connor wasn’t everybody, and he of all people should’ve known that.
“No, not that proof, the one you posted on your blog. You know, about the Pigeonhole Principle.” My blog? Connor found my blog?
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