Sunday, September 21, 2008

Meet the Mathlete


We often wake up on weekends and take in a morning run at the Santa Ana College track. Today I was feeling kinda under the weather, so I tagged along and brought a book. Instead of reading I looked at the new (well, about a year old) athletic complex. As I admired the row of exterior metal fins, I was struck by the mathematical soundness of the design. Equal spacing, structurally correct. Maybe I was having a Beautiful Mind moment...

I used to be a math whiz. Numbers and new mathematical concepts would come easy to me, and I actually had fun solving equations. My last hurrah was probably in 9th grade when I won a tricked out HP calculator in a math competition held at Stanford University. Then I can only chalk my stagnation to laziness...spent too much time listening to the radio, fell behind on my homework, started taking long naps after school. I coasted my way through high school, and in my undergrad years I didn't take a single math class. I tested out on day one, and never looked back.

And that calculator...EzraPounded sold it on eBay a year back for about $15o. Even my depleted, laughable mathabilities of today figure that's not bad for a 20-year old contraption.

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