Me And My Best Friend

I remember being in elementary school and feeling a deep alienation at people’s just vicious rejection of mathematics, the reason being, like

It’s like. A classic approach to hypothetical communication with aliens that you start with the things you know you have in common and proceed from there. Mathematics is that.

Imagine you approach someone you don’t understand with a thing specifically designed to be something they and you can agree on as a starting point for communication and they just react with “yeah i hate this”

What kind of math are you studying?

math tuition is hell im gonna shoot myself with a gun

Getting a lot of: “No but like you don’t get it math is stupid and useless and reading books is actually morally good… and teaches us about the world around us and explains how it works which stupid math doesn’t do why should I learn calculus I would rather shame people into reading Jane Eyre than open a math book or website”

And like … out of the millions of things you can do with basic and foundational math … that shows you how the world works … Calculus, as one example, can literally explain to you why leaves grow at the angle they grow … there is little more beautiful than being able to calculate exactly how nature works and understand why.

There is beauty in every subject … and few other subjects encapsulate ways to understand your surroundings like math.

If you are comfortable shaming people for not reading fiction books because you personally are good at reading them, but uncomfortable being shamed for not doing mathematics consider you are in the exact same boat as people who are afraid to read fiction books because they don’t see why it is important to do so and are unwilling to begin.

You are the people you hate.

Heartbreaking! The obvious letter to use for this variable isn't available because you already used it for something else!

This exactly. It feels as if the brains of my friends flow smoothly towards the shore of certainty through the choppy seas of truth- meanwhile I'm taking a raft.

there's a very specific feeling that makes it difficult to study math in an academic environment when all students around you seem like they're exponentially more intuitive than you in this subject

REBLOG THIS POST IF YOU ARE A MATH ENJOYER

No it is not optional, I desperately need to follow y’all so that there is more math on my dashboard.

Things Math Professors Say

"The proof is trivial." (Oh, cool. Guess I’m just an idiot then.)

"Left as an exercise." (Translation: You’ll never solve this in a million years.)

"It’s obvious, really." (Sure, if you’re a demigod.)

"By inspection." (Stares harder at problem… still nothing.)

"For small values of epsilon." (How small? Subatomic? Microscopic? Vibes?)

"WLOG (Without Loss of Generality)." (Oh, we’re just assuming it doesn’t matter now? Alright.)

"Details omitted." (Because apparently, you don’t need to understand it.)

"By the usual argument." (Which you somehow don’t know because you weren’t born in 1702.)

"Assume the rest holds." (That’s some impressive optimism right there.)

"The usual abuse of notation." (Why does this feel like an emotional wound?)

"Almost surely correct." (But also possibly wrong? Cool, thanks for the clarity.)

"A non-rigorous approach." (I thought math was supposed to be precise?!)

"Assume it’s obvious." (Buddy, NOTHING about this is obvious.)

"The reader may verify." (No, the reader may CRY.)

"To the interested reader." (Guess I’m not interested enough, huh?)

"Well-behaved functions only." (We’re function-shaming now?)

"Obvious to the trained eye." (Guess I’ll never make it out of amateur league.)

"A trivial case analysis." (Trivial to WHO??)

"Integrate by parts, twice." (Bold of you to assume I got it the first time.)

"As you can clearly see." (Oh, I clearly see my FAILURE, alright.)

"It works in practice too." (Unlike me, who barely works at all.)

"Assume a spherical cow." (Are we doing math or abstract sculpture?)

"A standard result." (Not in my standards, pal.)

"We skip the tedious algebra." (No, no, please—I wanted to suffer MORE.)

"Assume non-zero solutions exist." (Okay, now we’re just assuming life works out.)

"The usual topology." (Bro, I don’t even know the unusual topology.)

"Finitely many cases left." (Just kidding, there’s 72.)

"By virtue of symmetry." (Virtue? I have none left.)

"Don’t worry about the constant." (The constant is probably my GPA dropping.)

"Assume continuity." (I’m assuming my brain is breaking.)

"Smooth functions only." (Guess I’ll leave, I’m clearly not smooth enough.)

"The simplest non-trivial case." (Simplest? NON-TRIVIAL? Pick a side!)

"Epsilon goes to zero." (Epsilon isn’t the only one losing it.)

"And the rest follows." (Where? Straight to my breakdown?)

God Eidolon is really just a victim of the most ridiculous moral consequences ever. Like “Aha, you thought it was a good idea to neglect your own mental health in order to achieve a greater good and save other people’s lives? Well think again, because just maybe giant hell demons will emerge and destroy Japan.” Poor guy never had a chance. The guy got his brain connected directly to the “summon monsters that kill people” button with absolutely no warning that the button existed or that he could press it. Oh also if you reach a certain threshold of stress the button presses itself. Consequences of drinking alien brain goo i guess

Discovering something new in mathematics and then naming it after Euler just to fuck with people.

math people scare me. math people will be like "math works in mysterious ways TO YOU. i get it though." and they do and it's fucking terrifying.