A math story.

Well, this story wasn't written by me, but i find it quite smart and funny at the same time. Have fun reading it:

Impure Mathematics
------ -----------
To prove once and for all that math can be fun, we present: Wherein it is related how that paragon of womanly virtue, young Polly Nomial (our heroine) is accosted by that notorious villain Curly Pi, and factored (oh horror!!!)

Once upon a time (1/t) pretty little Polly Nomial was strolling across a field of vectors when she came to the boundary of a singularly large matrix. Now Polly was convergent, and her mother had made it an absolute condition that she must never enter such an array without her brackets on. Polly, however, who had changed her variables that morning and was feeling
particularly badly behaved, ignored this condition on the basis that it was insufficient and made her way in amongst the complex elements. Rows and columns closed in on her from all sides. Tangents approached her surface. She became tensor and tensor.

Quite suddenly two branches of a hyperbola touched her at a single point. She oscillated violently, lost all sense of directrix, and went completely divergent. As she tripped over a square root that was protruding from the erf and plunged headlong down a steep gradient. When she rounded off once more, she found herself inverted, apparently alone, in a non-Euclidean
space.

She was being watched, however. That smooth operator, Curly Pi, was lurking inner product. As his eyes devoured her curvilinear coordinates, a singular expression crossed his face. He wondered, "Was she still convergent?" He decided to integrate properly at once.

Hearing a common fraction behind her, Polly rotated and saw Curly Pi approaching with his power series extrapolated. She could see at once by his degenerate conic and dissipative that he was bent on no good.

"Arcsinh," she gasped.

"Ho, ho," he said, "What a symmetric little asymptote you have I can see you angles have lots of secs."

"Oh sir," she protested, "keep away from me I haven't got my brackets on."

"Calm yourself, my dear," said our suave operator, "your fears are purely imaginary."

"I, I," she thought, "perhaps he's not normal but homologous."

"What order are you?" the brute demanded.

"Seventeen," replied Polly.

Curly leered "I suppose you've never been operated on."

"Of course not," Polly replied quite properly, "I'm absolutely convergent."

"Come, come," said Curly, "let's off to a decimal place I know and I'll take you to the limit."

"Never," gasped Polly.

"Abscissa," he swore, using the vilest oath he knew. His patience was gone. Coshing her over the coefficient with a log until she was powerless, Curly removed her discontinuities. He stared at her significant places, and began smoothing out her points of inflection. Poor Polly. The algorithmic method was now her only hope. She felt his digits tending to her asymptotic
limit. Her convergence would soon be gone forever.
There was no mercy, for Curly was a heavyside operator. Curly's radius squared itself; Polly's loci quivered. He integrated by parts. He integrated by partial fractions. After he cofactored, he performed runge - kutta on her. The complex beast even went all the way around and did a contour integration. What an indignity - to be multiply connected on her first integration. Curly went on operating until he completely satisfied her hypothesis, then he exponentiated and became completely orthogonal.

When Polly got home that night, her mother noticed that she was no longer piecewise continuous, but had been truncated in several places But it was to late to differentiate now. As the months went by, Polly's denominator increased monotonically. Finally she went to L'Hopital and generated a small but pathological function which left surds all over the place and drove Polly to deviation.

The moral of our sad story is this: "If you want to keep your expressions convergent, never allow them a single degree of freedom."

Scapat din lant

Exact asa ma simt si eu acum: ca un caine scapat din lant. Metaforic vorbind, evident, am scapat din lantul primei sesiuni. Cu cateva zgarieturi, unele superficiale, altele mai adanci, am reusit sa ma eliberez din prima incursiune in legendarul iad studentesc. Chiar daca din 5 examene am 2 restante, ma simt bine acum. Ma simt bine dintr-un orgoliu oarecum prostesc de a nu copia de la altii care, evident, isi invatasera de 3 ori mai mult decat mine. Insa aceasta capatana a mea seaca, chiar daca a fost prea ingusta ca sa inghesui materia celor 2 matematici intr-un timp foarte scurt (teoretic 3 zile pentru fiecare, insa practic 1 zi sau chiar mai putin), a refuzat categoric orice tip de "HDD extern". Recunosc, am intrebat o formula, dar cam atat. Consecintele au fost pe masura: 2 de 4 din prima sesiune. Asta este, doar nu mi-ar fi placut sa ma plictisesc in toamna.
De-a lungul sesiunii am tot avut diverse impulsuri care nu au avut nici cea mai mica legatura cu procesul de invatare. Sau, daca am invatat, invatam orice altceva decat ceea ce-mi trebuia la examene: programare. Am o inclinatie putin bolnavicioasa spre acest domeniu. Imi petrec poate prea mult timp in fata calculatorului. Pana acum, ma jucam sau pierdeam vremea in fata lui. Insa, acum dupa sesiune, am redeschis subiectul unor proiecte personale, unele in echipa, altele "solo". Dezvoltarea software-ului m-a acaparat de cand eram mic. Acea mica bulina rosie din Supaplex care manca in disperare Infotroni ma facea sa ma intreb daca intr-adevar asta se intampla in interiorul unui PC. Cu timpul, am inceput sa experimentez jocuri mai noi, mai moderne, mai complexe. Ziua fatala a fost cand am dat un search pe Google: "game making tutorial". Bineinteles, nu m-a ajutat prea mult in momentul respectiv, insa am aflat cam ce inseamna un limbaj de programare si cat de multe lucruri pot face cu el. Am ajuns clasa a 9-a, am primit manualul de informatica si l-am devorat in mai putin de 2 zile. Dupa aceste 2 zile, invatasem ca un dement toata programarea din primul an de liceu. Bineinteles, curiozitatea mea si dorinta de a construi, de a crea ceva din nimic, m-a ambitionat enorm si m-a facut sa invat tehnici de programare pe care nu le-as fi descoperit atat de repede daca m-as fi lasat pe mana sistemului de invatamant.
M-am departat insa prea mult de subiect. Aceasta "scapare" a mea i se poate asocia cu usurinta analogia unui caine din simplul motiv ca, daca in timpul examenelor ma gandeam "abia astept sa scap si sa fac X,Y,Z " etc, acum parca nu stiu cu ce sa incep. Sunt intr-un fel dezorientat. Stiti cum e atunci cand mergi la sala de forta, tragi foarte tare de o anumita grupa de muschi, iar dupa sedinta, daca iti folosesti grupa respectiva, ai impresia ca iti iei intr-un fel zborul, muschii respectivi fiind "descatusati". Asa sunt si eu acum. Dupa acel "viol" intelectual (altfel nu am cum sa-l numesc) al materiilor precum chimia (adica TOTAL inutile pentru profilul meu), "anusul" creierului meu (ca sa pastram totusi analogia...ANALogia...hmmm, sounds funny) se simte prea relaxat, creeandu-mi impresia ca mi se scurge toata farama de neuron neafectat undeva pe podeaua camerei mele. Am nevoie de un dop, iar singurul mod de a face rost de un asemenea dop este sa ma invat sa ma simt liber, sa ma simt student in adevaratul sens al cuvantului, sa ies, sa plec, sa fug, sa fac ceea ce vreau, sa pot sa aleg ceea ce invat, SA POT SA ALEG CURSUL PROPRIEI VIETI.
Dar..."But does one ever truly have a choice? One can only match move by move the machinations of fate and thus defy the tyrannus stars" - Legacy of Kain: Defiance, Intro Movie.