Inspired by Calculus is not a field of mathematics
Go ahead, try me. Two plus two? Duh, four. Seven plus six? Thirteen, bee-otch. Nine plus nine? Four plus seven? Nine plus two? Bam!!
Eighteen,
eleven, eleven again. Thought I'd get messed up on those last two, having the same answer? Not a chance. Dude, I
own single digit numbers, when it comes to adding them together. Seven plus zero? Still seven! Five times three? Ha, nice try, I simply roll that times sign sideways until it's a plus, and guess what? It's eight!! Not that I couldn't multiply them if I wanted to, but
that is simply not my thing, brother.
So, you may ask, how does one become a veritable
maestro of single-digit number addition? Well I'll tell ya, it's crazy, simply comes to me naturally. I confess, I was something of a child prodigy; I was fascinated with the coming together of numbers from as early as I could remember, and by my early teens, I could pretty much add any two single-digit numbers on command. Like I don't even
think about it, the answers simply come to me. I remember like it was yesterday, I brought home that junior high school aptitude report. Grammar? Not so good. History, social studies, spelling, all negatives. But there, like a light shining from amidst the downers, was the report of my aptitude at mathematics. This sentence, like a
beacon beaming into the night:
Able to add single digit numbers.
You know, I remember them testing all kinds of math things -- like, if Joe gets on a train in one city traveling west at 90 miles per hour, and Jill gets on a train at a city 150 miles away, traveling east at 60 miles per hour, how long will it take for them to pass each other? Dude, I don't give a crap, I don't
ride the train. But if Joe's train has five cars and Jill's train has seven, boom!! Twelve. Just like that. You tell me how many cars on each train, and I will tell you the total. So long as neither train has more than nine cars.
On top of it all, I am really starting to make my name in this field. Just last week I was attending a major, major international mathematics convention, where I presented my paper conclusively enumerating the number of combinations of single digit number which add up to ten (turns out there are five combinations, unless you consider reversal of the order of numbers in the set to be different; in which event there are four more, for a total of, let's see five plus four so....
nine combinations).
Some of my fellow mathematicians asked me what field I was in, and I proudly told 'em: addition of single digit numbers. They were appropriately amazed at the complexity and detail with which I was able to explain the multiplicity of combinatorials in the single-digit addition
paradigm. They found it especially remarkable when they learned that I had successfully obtained substantial government grants for my research, and even more so that I had recently been accepted to participate in an extensive
Stanford University Department of
Psychology study on the ability of a human mind to obtain such a highly specialized focus entirely on what they deceptively call 'super-simple arithmetic function.'
And I am even today heavily engaged in a revolutionary project on the addition of single-digit numbers in
groups of three!! (so long as at least two of the numbers in the group can be added to form another single-digit number) Four plus six
plus five.... hang on.... gimme a minute here.... four-- no,
fifteen!!