And the College Weirdness Continues...

The other day, I went into my dorm's kitchen to cook dinner. Pretty standard state of affairs so far. But when I got there, I discovered, much to my dismay, that the stove was covered with four trays of cookies.

I had no idea what to do. I had to clear off the stove, but I had no idea whose cookies they were, or where I could put them. Then I noticed a paper towel by the cookies, on which someone had scrawled, "Bring to room 216." Fair enough, I thought. I need the stove, and the people in room 216 probably want their cookies. Might as well be a gentleman and deliver their cookies for them.

I bring one of the trays up to room 216 and knock on the door. When someone opens it, I can see that there's a party going on inside, and I recognize the crazy musicians from the room above me. I explain about the cookies- how I needed to clear off the stove and saw the sign on the cookies, so I decided to deliver them. The party-goers look at me in bewilderment. Apparently, none of them know who baked the cookies, or why they were labeled to be sent to that room!

Suddenly, a girl walks by, asking, "Who stole my cookies?" I sheepishly explain that I had seen the sign on them, so I had brought them up here. She tells us that she baked them for the open mic night that was going on in the dorm next to ours, and she had never said for them to go to room 216. I return the cookies, embarrassed.

Who put the sign on the cookies remains a mystery.

-Lukas

Order of Operations

Look, I know the fact that she's my relative shouldn't excuse anything. Believe me, I'm not encouraging nepotism here. I'm just asking for some leniency.

It's true that she breaks all the rules-she's constantly dividing by zero, and last Tuesday she took the square root of negative twelve without so much as a bye-your-leave to imaginary numbers. But let's get some perspective: at least she knows how to multiply polynomials. She also plays a mean game of bridge.

And yes, she does have bad habits. She leaves her improper fractions in the sink and never puts her derivatives back where she found them. She's really a sweet person, though-just a little absent-minded, and really, who isn't?

I won't deny that she's occasionally inclined to mix up her isosceles triangles with her scalenes, but she does know the Fibonacci sequence out to a hundred numbers. Plus, she always brings fantastic meat-loaf to our family reunions.

The transgressions, it seems, are numerous. But, come on, she's my mother's sister!

All I can ask for is your mercy. I hope that you will find it somewhere in your heart, deep down, to forgive. So, if you hold any compassion at all, I beg you to Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally.
-Alison

Beware of False Prophets (And Monks)

It's my first week at UMass Amherst, and weird things have already started happening to me.

The other day, on the way to my linguistics class, I was stopped by a tall man with arm tattoos, ear piercings, and a beaded necklace. He asked me if I was a student here. "Yes," I replied. He asked me a few other things- what my major was, etc.- and then, out of the blue, handed me a copy of the Bhagavad-Gita, and announced that he was a traveling monk.

I was a bit surprised- he didn't look all that monkish to me- but I was interested, so I kept listening. He said he was part of an organization that was trying to spread the Bhagavad-Gita to more people. He told me a bit more about the book, and said he wasn't selling it, he just wanted me to have it, but could I please leave a donation? The book looked interesting, so I fished in my wallet for a dollar and handed it to him.

He looked disappointed, and told me that the book had cost five dollars, and they tried to cover the cost of the books. I then thought, I'm probably being conned, aren't I? I told him that I was sorry, but I couldn't donate any more. He took the book back and returned my dollar, and I proceeded on to class, amused and slightly bewildered by the encounter.

-Lukas

A Wise Man Once Said...

A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the lack of value of Arena Scheduling.
-Charles Darwin

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about Arena Scheduling: it goes on.
-Robert Frost

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and Arena Scheduling stands explained.
-Mark Twain

Arena Scheduling is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Arena Scheduling isn't.
-Mark Twain

All wrong-doing arises because of Arena Scheduling. If Arena Scheduling is transformed can wrong-doing remain?
-Buddha

A person who never made a mistake never tried Arena Scheduling.
-Albert Einstein

All Arena Scheduling needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
-Thomas Jefferson

Mankind must put an end to Arena Scheduling before Arena Scheduling puts an end to mankind.
-John F. Kennedy

-Marianne

Lunch is Just About the Weirdest Time of Day for Me #2

I've been planning to write this blog story for over a month, but didn't get to it until now. Oh well.

It all started rather innocently. I usually went home after camp and made lunch for myself, but I was getting tired of that. I decided to go to Cabot's instead.

The awkwardness began with the fact that I was alone. There's something not quite right about eating at a restaurant by yourself. It's just not meant to happen. To make matters worse, there was no room left at the counter, meaning I was forced to sit at a table meant for more than one person. Blah.

Even so, I wouldn't have minded so much. If it hadn't been for the fact that the waitress recognized me, there would be no trouble at all.

The waitress came to give me a menu. Eager to cut the awkwardness of sitting by myself without food to distract me to as short an amount of time as possible, I informed that I already knew what I wanted. I was planning on getting a chicken finger plate.

"Chicken finger plate?" the waitress guessed.

I shuddered. I suppose I go to Cabot's and order the same thing often enough that the waitress recognized me and knew what I want. I can't stand it when people who aren't supposed to know me do. It just bothers me. Unwilling to agree, I made a last minute decision. "Actually, I was going to have a hamburger."

"Oh," the waitress responded, sounding a little surprised, but only a little. "How do you like that cooked?"

"Medium Well," I answered automatically.

"Would you like anything - lettuce, tomato, onions - on that?"

I decided I wanted lettuce and pickle. "Lettuce, tomato, and pickle," I said.

Oh no! I didn't mean to order tomatoes. I really, really, really don't like tomatoes. I was about to modify my order when I realized, in all the awkwardness, I had somehow failed to order cheese.

"Actually, can I have a cheeseburger?"

I didn't want to modify my order twice, so I let the tomato thing slip.

"American cheese."

The waitress left and I waited awkwardly. Eventually, my food came.

There they were: the tomatoes. The situation was weird enough without me leaving the tomatoes on my plate. If I came back to Cabot's and had that waitress, she might think of me as the person who ordered tomatoes and didn't eat them. I shuddered again.

Willing to go to great lengths to prevent that terrible scenario, I picked up the better looking of the two tomatoes and took a bite out of it. The fleshy part was bearable, but the jelly stuff was just disgusting. I took another bite, wincing. Then, in a painfully large number of bites, I finished the first slice.

I decided it wasn't so weird to leave the second, especially since it was a little yellow in the middle, so I left that there. I then began eating massive numbers of french fries to get the taste out of my mouth. It didn't seem to want to go, but we were both glad when it left. Or I suppose it might have just been me.

-Marianne

Dance Dance Revolution

It's hard to describe exactly what I did over the summer. Officially I say I participated in a summer math program, but it was much more than just that. It was a community of a hundred and fifty mathematicians, all uber smart and super crazy fun. And super crazy. And from that experience I have more than one weird story to tell...

The first one took place at a dance, and reminds me of what people think traditional crazy absent minded mathematicians are like.

One weekend we held a giant dance party. Different from our normal laundry room strobe light parties, this was to include many people in a larger space, and normal hip hop music. And most of all, dancing. In strobe light parties, you don't dance--you play around with the trippy effects of discontinuity...or, for the non-mathematicians, you play around with the trippy effects of stop motion, things like seeing through your hand or numbers on washing machines looking like they're floating in space.

Dancing, like dancing at a club type dancing, is a specific kind of dancing. I have personally always felt awkward about it, but as far as I could tell, you sort of bop to the music. So I went out on the dance floor and did my best, dancing with friends. As I'm dancing, I notice one of the grad students, Fiyero, sitting on the sidelines watching. I invited him over, worried that he felt excluded. He didn't seem to be having a very good time.

He shook his head and so I continued dancing. About five minutes later, I hear a cry from the sidelines-- "I've got it!" Fiyero exclaims. "What?" we all ask, inquisitively. "I understand how to dance. You see, I figured there had to be some kind of restriction that makes this dance what it is, and I've got it. You keep your elbows close to you."

I sort of stare at him, perplexed, then go into fits of laughter. He was such a typical mathematician. And yet, upon further thinking, we all agreed that he was probably right. It would seem super awkward to see someone with their elbows out.

Well, this was a long time ago, so you might be wondering why I mention this today. Today, I was wandering around the internet and bumped across this scientific study:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/08/psychologists-killer-dance-moves-men

If you watch the video closely, you'll see that their example of a good dancer keeps his elbows much closer to his body than their example of a bad dancer.

I'm telling you, mathematicians know how to dance.


Sachi